Tartu City Museum is the best place to learn about the history of Estonia’s second-biggest city. The colourful history of Tartu is told in our permanent exhibition, entitled ‘Dorpat. Jurjev. Tartu’. The beginnings of Tartu can be traced back to the ancient Tharbata or Tarbatu fort. We introduce medieval Dorpat, the destruction wrought by the Livonian War, religion under Polish and Swedish rule, 18th-century trades in the city and the Treaty of Tartu.

Founded in 1955, Tartu City Museum was first situated on Oru Street. Since 2001 it has been located in an 18th-century nobleman’s townhouse in the Ülejõe district, close to the city centre.

Tartu City Museum is situated in what was once the home of a Lieutenant Woldemar Conrad von Pistohlkors, built in 1790. The building was designed by renowned Tartu mason Johann Heinrich Bartholomäus Walter, who also designed the Town Hall and worked in the city for over 40 years. It was the first building to be constructed from stone in what was then the Petersburger district (now Ülejõe). The Koolujõgi River used to run past the building. The Emajõgi River once split in two, surrounding Holm Island, which is now Holm Park next to the museum. In the early 19th century, the Koolujõgi River was filled with rubbish by the townspeople, erasing the island and its branch of the river from the town map. The entrance to the building was originally on Kivi Street. The two-storey, early neoclassical residence with its tile roofing had eight rooms, an entryway and a kitchen on the 1st floor and a suite of parlours and a stateroom on the 2nd floor. The complex included stables and a barn.

The most lavish room in the museum is the early neoclassical stateroom. Designed at the time to impress guests, it has been appropriately decorated to reflect its formality and importance. The colourful faux-marble panels on the walls, between the windows, around the mirrors, surmounting the doorways and on the ceiling are adorned with lush Louis XVI-style stucco ornamentation. The walls are decorated with oval cartouches of figural compositions and trophies, the doorways surmounted by wreaths of oak and laurel and the mirrors are encased in festoons with the early neoclassical favourite Greek krater as the centrepiece of their frames. The wall and ceiling decorations are thought to be the work of a Bohemian master tradesman by the name of Jan Kalupka, who is known to be behind the stucco decor of the stateroom in Roosna-Alliku Manor.

The building belonged to the Pistohlkors family until 1809, when it was acquired by university stable master Justus von Daue. It then changed hands several times until it was bought by merchant Carl Faure in 1870. The 1st floor housed a variety of shops and a printing house, while the 2nd floor was leased as apartments and had a pawnbroker’s. The square in front of the house was used for horse fairs and by coachmen as a taxi rank, inspiring the square’s name, Hobuseturg or ‘Horse Market’. Later it was renamed Henning Square after the merchant Henning’s house and shop on the square.

From 1886-1940 the building was home to a printing house co-owned by writer and composer Karl August Hermann. The newspaper Postimees was printed here for 10 years. When the number of students attending Hugo Treffner’s private school (which had been founded in 1883) rose too high, making the schoolhouse (which was located in what is now Ülejõe Park) too crowded, the upper floors of the current museum building were leased to them.