The finest manor house in Lahemaa National Park, Palmse sits about 6 kilometres south of Võsu in its own landscaped park. The current neoclassical main building dates to the late 18th century when the von Pahlen family rebuilt the estate in the Baltic-German style — a style that once dotted this coast with dozens of estates, most of which did not survive the 20th century. Palmse has been meticulously restored and now serves as the visitor centre for Lahemaa National Park, with exhibitions on the park's natural and cultural history.
The grounds are as good as the house. A formal English-style park surrounds the manor, with a small lake, an orangery, a distillery building, and the old servants' quarters and stables, most of which house small museums or craft shops. The rose garden blooms in July. It is an easy half-day by car from Võsu, or longer if you want to walk the surrounding trails that connect Palmse to the nearby villages.
story: "During Soviet collectivisation in 1940, the von Pahlen family was expelled and the estate was used variously as a sanatorium and a farm. When restoration began in the 1970s, the restorers found the original 18th-century plaster and wall paintings still intact beneath later layers — preserved precisely because no one had bothered to renovate the building properly during the Soviet decades."