Patarei Prison Redux
Originally built as a fortress by Russian czar Nicholas I in 1820 to protect the city, Tallinn’s Patarei (Battery) Prison saw more extensive use as a Soviet detention center in the Baltics.
The whole place was entirely spooky and discomforting, bone-chillingly damp and cold even in June. It would be difficult to imagine it during the harsh and particularly dark winter months when its location so far north of the equator mean only a few hours of dim sunlight per day.
Some rooms and corridors were entirely too unlit and menacing even for me, most especially the pitch black narrow hallway leading to the purpoted execution chamber. I attempted to walk through it several times and into what might lay at the other end of it in full darkness before coming to the conclusion that maybe if all the hairs on the back of my neck kept standing straight up each time there might be a legitimate reason and I’d be best be moving along.
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Wait a second, this prison was built by a Russian czar in an independent country of Estonia? I wonder why would a czar would build a prison in a foreign country.
Hehe, good point. Estonia has had brief periods of independence in its history, but for most of the past few hundred years has usually been a vassal of either the Swedish or Russian empires. The Russians wrestled Estonia from the Swedes in 1721, Russian czar Nicholas I built the prison in 1820, and Estonia would not see independence until 1918.