The equal opportunities to enjoy the experiences offered are more extensive than ever before in Estonia: the medieval building has been made wheelchair-accessible in the maximum extent possible, in the extent of approximately 90%, and has been equipped with an elevator, an induction loop with sound amplification which is compatible with hearing aids, a guideline for the visually impaired, tactile copies of selected ship models, etc.
- Location and access
- Location of the exposition in the premises
- Entering the Museum
- Reception area and movement in the museum
- Ticket scanning
- Wardrobe
- Toilets
- Museum café and shop
- Leaving the museum
- Location and access
The museum is located at 70 Pikk Street, which is at the northern or seaward end of the street and is in the complex of the Great Coastal Gate and the artillery tower Fat Margaret. The tower part has five floors, plus a roof terrace. A multi-level, roofed cog hall has been built in the former courtyard of the museum.
The nearest public transport stop is Linnahall, where trams number 1 and 2 stop. Coming from Linnahall tram stop, you cross a sparse green area and cross a busy road. The tram stop is about 120 meters from the entrance to the museum building. There is a sidewalk on both sides of Pikk street and a cobbled road between them. The main entrance is on the left side of the street, on the right side when approaching from the direction of Town Hall Square. Coming from the direction of Town Hall Square, both sides of Pika Street are mostly bordered by beautiful old buildings connected sideways.
The main entrance is a door with glass windows opening onto Pikk Street. This is the most convenient way to enter and exit the museum, from where the guide road starts, which leads the visitor to the ticket office.
During the summer season, an additional entrance is open at the back of the tower towards the monument of the Estonia ferry disaster.
The museum is accessible by wheelchair through a brown wooden door, which is 10 meters to your left when facing the main entrance. It is open during museum opening hours. When you enter the door, there is a glass door that opens automatically outside to the left. Upon entering, you will immediately see a ramp. Go straight for about 1.5 meters, then the ramp turns to the right and takes you down to the ground floor – to the atrium with the reception area.
Nearly 90 percent of the museum is wheelchair accessible. There is no access to the rooms on the gate above Pikk Street, where there are narrow medieval walkways. The building is the only tower in the Old Town equipped with an elevator. The elevator has a voice announcement for floor numbers. For visually impaired visitors, there are guide paths from the elevator to tactile floor plans, braille labels, tactile ship models, audio tracks. A stationary sound amplification system with an induction loop is available at the ticket office and on excursions. Many hands-on solutions help visitors with intellectual disabilities to understand more complex maritime phenomena.
Tallinn Old Town parking rules apply in the museum. There is no separate museum parking lot or places for the disabled vehicles. A visit to a museum is free of charge for a person with special needs as well as for his or her escort on the basis of a certificate.
The ticket office phone number is 6 733 092.
From October to April, the museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, from May to September from Monday to Sunday from 10:00 to 19:00.
- Location of the exposition in the premises
The late medieval Great Coastal Gate complex houses one of the two permanent exhibitions of the Estonian Maritime Museum – “Sea in the Tower”. In the museum, you can get acquainted with the history of Estonian shipping since the Middle Ages. After a tour in the cog hall built in the former courtyard of the museum, you will reach the artillery tower – the higher the floor, the closer to the contemporary era. An exciting time journey awaits you in the world of shipbuilding, maritime trade, and seafarers.
Ground floor – unguarded wardrobe, toilets, lockers; a cog hall with the theme “Getting rich by the sea”
First floor – atrium and reception area, museum shop and cafe
Second floor – sailing ship hall with the theme “In the winds of all seas”
Third floor – steamboat hall with the theme “Steam changes the world”
Fourth floor – motor ship hall with the theme “Incessant development of technology”
Fifth floor – roof terrace and cafe, during museum´s opening hours it can be accessed by lift, otherwise only by stairs
From the third and fourth floors, you can also get to the gate building and the corner tower of the Great Coastal Gate. There are narrow walkways, so there is no wheelchair access.
- Entering the museum
The main entrance to the museum is the most convenient way to enter and exit, from where the main road starts, which leads the visitor to the ticket office.
Standing on Pikk Street, facing the main entrance of the museum, to your left, about two and a half meters away, is the Great Coastal Gate. The main entrance has double doors. Pull the right door from the vertical handle outwards to the right. The entrance is followed by a wind corridor about two meters wide and about two meters deep, the floor of which is covered with a small-mesh metal grate. You reach the glass doors. To open, pull the right door to the right towards you by the horizontal handle. You will reach a trapezoidal staircase. Move straight ahead for about two meters until you reach a safety sign 17 centimeters wide and 2.3 meters long with tactile polka-dots. This is followed by a corridor-wide staircase with seven steps down to the first floor, with handrails on the walls on each side. Keep right, because when you reach the stairs, the guide path starts on the right, about half a meter from the wall. This will take you to the ticket office.
- Reception area and movement in the museum
Upon reaching the main entrance of the museum, down the stairs, an eight-meter guide road leads to the ticket office. Follow the guide path to the first intersection, then four meters to the right and to the left at the next intersection until you reach the ticket office. From there, you can get a ticket at the Museum ticket office; in the shop and on excursions, it is possible to use a stationary sound amplification system with an induction loop.
Be sure to keep the ticket; you need to scan it when moving between floors!
Each floor of the museum has tactile floor plans, which also indicate your location – a round sign. It is most convenient to move between the floors by elevator. A guide path connects the elevator and the tactile plan on each floor. The doors of the round glass elevator open automatically when calling the elevator. The elevator door is 80 centimeters wide. The tactile call buttons are on the right wall 80 cm above the floor. Inside the elevator, the buttons are on the right wall. The elevator has a two-part ticket scanner protruding above the buttons, 120 cm above the floor.
When scanning, place the embossed sticker on the ticket facing up. There is a voice announcement in the elevator. It is also possible to take a lift to the museum’s rooftop terrace on the fifth floor for free. There is an outdoor café during the summer season. An alternative to the elevator is a spiral staircase around the elevator, with a handrail on each side. Be careful, because the handrails start and end on some floors with the first and last steps. Safety signs are on the first and last steps of the stairs. During the winter season, go from the ticket office to the ground floor, where you can leave your outerwear in the wardrobe.
- Ticket scanning
At the ticket office, an embossed sticker is affixed to the ticket section to mark on which side the barcode is located. Scanning is required on the first floor. Also, to move between floors in the elevator when riding to the second, third or fourth floor. The elevator has a two-part ticket scanner protruding from the wall on the right, above the elevator buttons at the height of 15 centimeters.
If you use stairs to move between floors, the scanner is on the first floor before the start of the spiral staircase, on the left inside of the concrete post, 80 centimeters from the floor. The ticket scanner opens the gate, which leads to the ground floor, where there is a wardrobe, toilet, and where the exhibition begins. Keeping the guide path to the right, inside the concrete post, there is a scanner and a gate that leads to the exhibition on the second floor.
When scanning, place the ticket on the bottom part of the scanner with the embossed label on the ticket facing up. The distance between the scanner and its bottom part is 10 centimeters. As a result of the scan, you can go through the security gate.
- Wardrobe
On the ground floor of the museum, there is an unguarded wardrobe and lockers. As you exit the elevator, the staircase is right on your left. The guide path leads directly to the floor plan, which is about four meters away. If you take about two to four steps from the elevator along the guide path, there will be an unguarded wardrobe and lockers in your right.
The wardrobe consists of three bars projecting from the wall. The middle bar extends beyond the others. All bars have racks on both sides and at two heights, which also have tactile numbers. There are two 45 cm high benches in the opposite wall of the bars. Moving for about 4 meters straight ahead from the first bar and keeping slightly to the right, you will reach the lockers. There are 32 of them in total – 8 horizontally and 4 vertically. To use them, you need a euro or a fifty-cent euro coin, which you can retrieve later. The lockers of the first row are about 80 centimeters high, and the remaining are 40 centimeters high. The lower locker row has a key in the upper right corner, and the others have keys in the lower right corner. The locker doors open outwards. The coin slot is located on the inside of the door aligned with the lock. The top locker row is not meant for visitors. Lockers and keys have tactile numbers.
There are toilets about two meters to the left of the elevator along the guide path, the second door on the right is a disabled toilet, the next four are unisex toilets. There are two sinks in the left wall of the toilet anteroom. The entrance to the exhibition hall is directly in front of the elevator.
- Toilets
The toilets are located on the ground floor and are to the left of the elevator. Follow the guide path for about two meters and turn left. The second door on the right hand is a disabled toilet. On the wall to the right of the door, at the height of about 1.3 meters, there is a tactile marking for the disabled toilet. The door opens outwards to the left. The lights come on automatically. The disabled toilet is trapezoidal and is about 2 meters wide and 3 meters deep. Keeping slightly to the right of the door, the distance to the toilet bowl is about 2 meters. Moving towards the toilet bowl, you will pass the changing table on your right. The toilet bowl has an armrest on both sides. There is toilet paper attached to the left armrest, and a hand shower is on the wall on the right side. There is a sink at 10 o’clock about a meter away from the door. Using the faucet is manual. The soap dispenser, hand drying paper, and trash can are to the right of the sink, on the wall.
The disabled toilet is followed by four unisex toilets, the doors of which open to the inside of the cabin. The unisex toilet right next to the disabled toilet has two toilet bowls, one of which is for children. At the height of about 1.20 meters between the middle toilet doors, there are two hand dryers with a drying gap. On the opposite wall of the toilets, there are two sinks separated by a half wall. The sinks are at different heights. The first one is lower, and the one on the end wall is higher. There are two faucets above each sink. The faucets are non-contact and operate with a motion sensor located to the left of the tap. The soap dispensers are located above the sink behind a mirror protruding from the wall. If you raise your hands to the lower edge of the mirror and move them slightly forward, you will feel the dispensers under the edge of the mirror.
- Museum café and shop
The museum café and shop are located on the ground floor of the artillery tower. It can be reached both through the disabled entrance from the street and from the atrium. From the floor plan of the atrium, the guide path leads to the elevator and the spiral staircase in the middle of the artillery tower. In front of the entrance connecting the atrium and the first floor of the artillery tower, there is a glass sliding door operated by a motion sensor. Upon entering the artillery tower, there is a staircase with ten concrete rectangular half-pillars surrounding the elevator and the spiral staircase. There is a glass wall between most of the pillars. The floor with a rounded floor plan is divided into two, with a shop towards the entrance to the atrium and a café area to the rear. Walk another 3 meters along the guide path. When standing with your back to the entrance, the white boat-shaped display stands of the store are to your right and left. If you want to visit the store, start counterclockwise and walk to the right of the guide path. There is a store cash register between 3 and 4 o’clock. Move counterclockwise from the cash register. On your right hand, there are irregularly placed display stands of different sizes, and on the left, there are shelves in a semicircle by the wall of the staircase. Keep moving until you reach the sixth display stand. Behind the sixth and fifth stand by the outer wall are two small oval cafe tables with two chairs. To the left of them is a third table with one chair. To the left of you, by the wall of the staircase, the shelves of the store end. Right next is the fourth cafe table with two chairs. When moving 4 meters from the last display stand towards 12 o’clock, you will reach the cash register of the café. The cash register with refrigerators is about 2.5 meters long. In addition to hot and cold drinks, the café also serves sandwiches and savory croissants as sweet snacks such as cakes or ice creams. During the summer season, a café serving also hot dishes is open on the roof terrace. There are two store display stands about 3 meters from the café’s cash register refrigerator. Going straight on for about 2 meters, you will return to the guide path.
- Leaving the museum
It is most convenient to leave the museum by retracing your steps. To do this, take the elevator to the first floor and return the audio device of the description tour to the ticket office. Once on the ground floor, follow the guide path directly into the atrium to the intersection of the first guide path, turn right, follow the guide path until you reach the safety sign in front of the stairs. Go up the stairs. Go straight for two meters, and you will reach the glass doors of the wind corridor that open by pushing, pass through the two-meter long wind corridor until you reach the main entrance door, which opens outwards. And you are back on Pikk Street.
