Tartu Cathedral

Immediately after the conquest, the Christians began construction of a bishop's fortress, the Castrum Tarbatae, on this strategic spot.

[1] The cathedral was completed at the end of the 15th century with the building of the two massive fortress-like towers on either side of the west front.

In 1629 Tartu became Swedish, and the new rulers showed little interest in the derelict building, which during their time fell further into ruin and neglect, except that the burials of the townspeople continued in the graveyard well into the 18th century, while the main body of the church served as a barn.

Today the museum contains displays of important artifacts of the university's history, scientific instruments and rare books.

The rest of the cathedral ruins and the external walls of the quire have been structurally secured and consolidated.

Besides a cafe, the park now contains numerous monuments to people connected to the scientific and literary traditions of Tartu.

These include among others: Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876), Tartu's greatest natural scientist; Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822), the first Estonian poet; Nikolay Pirogov (1810–1881), a famous Russian doctor; and Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798–1850), the initiator of the Estonian national epic, the Kalevipoeg.

A portrait relief in the middle commemorates the first rector of the re-founded university in 1802, Georg Friedrich Parrot (1767–1852), and bears the inscription Otium reficit vires ("Leisure Renews the Powers").