Hotel Viru KGB Museum

City Centre


The Hotel Viru (1972) was not only Estonia’s first skyscraper, but literally the only place for tourists to stay in Tallinn at the time. Having all the foreigners in one place made it much easier to keep tabs on them and the locals they had contact with, which is exactly what the KGB did from its 23rd-floor spy base. The hotel offers fascinating, hour-long tours of the facility in various languages.

The timing of English-language tours varies throughout the year – visit the website to check and prebook.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby City Centre attractions

1. Rotermann Quarter

0.13 MILES

With impressive contemporary architecture wedged between 19th-century brick warehouses, this development has transformed an outmoded (if historically very…

2. Architecture Museum

0.24 MILES

A restored limestone warehouse – the former Rotermann Salt Store – houses this modest museum, displaying building and town models (many of them from…

4. St Catherine's Church

0.26 MILES

Perhaps Tallinn’s oldest building, St Catherine's Monastery was founded by Dominican monks in 1246. In its glory days it had its own brewery and hospital…

5. St Nicholas' Orthodox Church

0.28 MILES

Built in 1827 on the site of an earlier Catholic church appearing in 15th-century records, St Nicholas' was the focal point for the Russian traders that…

6. City Museum

0.29 MILES

Tallinn’s City Museum is actually split over seven different sites. This location, its main branch, is set in a 14th-century merchant’s house and traces…

7. Helios Hall

0.3 MILES

This novel gallery has come up with a way around the difficulty of borrowing great paintings from their home galleries: simply project images of…

8. Town Council Pharmacy

0.34 MILES

Nobody's too sure of the exact date it opened, but by 1422 this pharmacy was already onto its third owner, making it the oldest continually operating…