Maarjamäe (Maarjamägi)

Mary’s mount (see Mäe for discussion). And no jokes please. Name of summer estate once known as Strietberg or Streitberg (battle of the bulge) after, legend has it, a vigorous disagreement between the Blackheads and Russians. Known also at one time as Suhkrumägi (sugar mountain, like a Pão de Açucar but without the tacky perroquet à claquettes atop?) after the sugar mill built by a certain Johan Gottlieb Clementz in 1811, whether as a result of Andreas Marggraf’s discovery of sugar crystals in beet in 1747, or the world’s first sugar-beet factory built at Cunern, Lower Silesia (aka Kunern, modern-day Konary, Wołów County, Poland) in 1801 or, most likely, the British blockade spurring Napoleon’s promotion of beet sugar in 1811, either way, the plant (factory, not root) failed after 26 years, was bought by one of the Christian Rotermanns (see Rotermanni) and converted to a starch and spirits factory, which burnt down in 1869. In 1873, Count Anatoli Orlov-Davidov (1837-1905), Equerry to the Tsar and great-grandson of Vladimir, youngest brother of Grigory Orlov of Orlov Diamond fame, bought the property and baptized it with its present name after his wife, Maria Yegorovna, daughter of one of the copious Count Tolstoys, and/or their daughter, also named Maria. Its Estonian name – Maarjamäe – came into usage in the 1930s.