If a visitor to Estonia could only visit a single church, St Martin's in Türi would probably be the one to choose. It is very conscious of its central location in the country so brings together architectural and artistic trends from throughout Estonia and from a range of periods. The walls therefore combine brick, granite and limestone. They date from the late 13th century, whereas the polychrome rooster was put on top of the tower in 1999. In between there are the 16th-century wooden carvings of Christian Ackermann around the altar and the pulpit and then the 19th-century tower. The stained glass by the contemporary artist Dolores Hoffmann will surely be treasured for many centuries to come. One window illustrates the birth of Christ and was used in 2003 by the Estonian Post Office as the subject of their Christmas stamp. The whole church appeared on a stamp in 1995. Considering the wartime damage elsewhere in the town and in the surrounding county, it is remarkable how the church survived.Elsewhere, Türi appeals to two probably conflicting groups of people - railway enthusiasts and horticulturalists. When Estonia had a serious commitment to a railway system, it was centred on Türi, and railway workshops still operate there. As the railway service started to improve during 2006, these workshops will hopefully be busier in the future. The Town Museum, which covers its history until 1940, concentrates on the 19th-century industrialisation. It has a lot of material on the railway system, particularly bearing in mind that the collection only started in 1995. It is possible that in due course there will be a dedicated railway museum here, but this will depend on what happens to the material currently housed at Lavassaare. Türi would seem to be a logical home for it. Garden fairs take place throughout May in Türi but there is clearly collective pressure on the entire population to take horticulture seriously. They do, after all, have the space and the time necessary for this. A visit any time during the summer will show the results of this activity. The Broadcasting Museum opened here in 2001, in the same new building that houses the Town Museum. The first Estonian radio broadcasts were made from here, in view of its central location, and the opening of the museum was a celebration of the 75th anniversary of this. The technical equipment and the sets that reached the consumer from the 1920s until the present day are all shown, for both radio and television. There are also unusual behind-the-scenes views of film studios, hospitals and mines, all from Soviet times. Neil Taylor "Estonia. The Bradt Travel Guide", 2007 |
