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Viru väljak (Viru)
Known as ‘Flea market’ in the 19th C (but see Täi), although the 3 variants – Est., Ger., Rus. – all call it louse market: Täiturg, Läusemarkt, Вшивый рынок (Vshivyy rynok), and/or ‘Russian market’ in various guises from 1791 to 1939: Russischer Markt (1791-1907), Vene Turu (1885), Русскій рынокъ (1907-1916) (see note on Russian spelling in intro) and Vene turg (1908-1939) and, oddly, acquiring its present name during the 1st Soviet Invasion (1939-1940) but under which authority I do not know, then moving on to greater heights with Stalini väljak (1940-1960), punctuated by the Nazis as Wierländischer Platz (1942), which could have been worse: although Estonia was now to be known as Reichskommissariat Ostland, Generalbezirk Estland, they could pretend they chose this name themselves. A compromise was reached in 1960 with the one-name-fits-all Keskväljak (central square), then back at last to Viru väljak in 1970. Current municipal raison d’être: tramway switch-point. This was the original starting-point of the E67, first from Tallinn to Warsaw, now Helsinki to Prague.
Rotermanni (Christian X Rotermann)
Four-generation dynasty of industrialists called Christian <insert second name here> Rotermann, running businesses as diverse as building materials, department store, factories for iron- and woodworking, raw flax and starch processing, distilling, flour-milling and baking, macaroni, as well as trading grain, buying from as far away as Western Siberia, and trading in the salt stored in the Rotermanni soolaladu, or salt depot, today the Estonian Museum of Architecture. Various scenes from Tarkovski’s film Stalker were shot in present-day Rotermanni Kvartal, and there is now a Stalkeri käik off Hobujaama. Tallinn already had a Solaris shopping mall (opened March 2009)...
