2. Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of
159.2 km2 (61.5 sq mi) with a population of 425 249. It is situated on
the northern coast of the country, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland,
80 km (50 mi) south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint
Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list of UNESCOWorld
Heritage Sites. The city was a European Capital of Culture for 2011,
along with Turku in Finland.Tallinn is the oldest capital city in
Northern Europe. The city was known as Reval from the 13th
century until 1917 and again during the Nazi invasion of Estonia
from 1941 to 1944.
3. Population in Tallinn
The registered population of Tallinn is 425,249 as of 1 April 2013.
Ethnic group
%
Estonians
55,3 %
Russians
36,8 %
Ukrainians
3,8 %
Belarusians
2,1 %
Finns
0,6 %
Others
2,7 %
4. Education
Institutions of higher education and science include:
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Estonian Academy of Arts
Estonian Academy of Security Sciences
Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
Estonian Business School
Estonian Maritime Academy
Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church Institute of Tehnology
National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics
Tallinn University
Talllinn University of Technology
5. Information Technology
In addition to longtime functions as seaport and capital city,
Tallinn has seen development of an information
technology sector; in its 13 December 2005, edition, The
New York Times characterized Estonia as "a sort of
Silicon Valley on the Baltic Sea". One of Tallinn's sister
cities is the Silicon Valley town of Los Gatos, California.
Skype is one of the best-known of several Estonian startups originating from Tallinn. Many start-ups originated
from the Soviet-era Institute of Cybernetics. In recent
years Tallinn is gradually becoming the main IT centre of
Europe, with CCD COE of NATO, EU Agency for largescale IT systems and IT development centres of large
corporations, such as TeliaSonera and Kuehne + Nagel
being based in the city.
6. Tallinn Free Public Transport
From January, Tallinn is the first capital in the EU to
provide free public transport to its citizens. To be
entitled to freely use public transport in Tallinn, citizens
of Tallinn have to purchase the so-called ‘green card’
and personalise it. People from outside Tallinn can also
buy the ‘green card’ which enables them to load the
needed amount of money to use public transport. Since
the implementation of free public transport, a significant
increase of the number of registered Tallinners can be
