TarTuConference City With Spirit

Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia. By world standards it’s quite small, but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in spirit. The ‘Spirit of

Tartu’, as locals call this phenomenon, is something inexplicable, something you cannot see or touch. Rather, it’s something you can feel pulsing through the air, embedded in the Old Town cobblestones, carved into the university’s

historic buildings and glowing like an aura around the students, residents and countless cultural events.

When asked what they like most about Tartu, visitors often answer: ‘The Spirit!’ They’ll say they can’t explain it, it’s just the good feeling they get while staying here. This Spirit is mostly believed to be linked to the university

and the students, but over time the entire city has become infused with it.

The City with Spirit

This city on the banks of the Emajõgi River has always been a hotspot for creative, innovative and just plain amazing people. This is one reason Tartu has played such an important part in Estonia’s history and culture. Here lies the cradle of Estonia’s famous song festival tradition, its national theatre institutions and its educational system.

The City of StudentsTartu has been a university town and a city for young people for a very long time.

The University of Tartu – Estonia’s largest and most traditional university – was established as far back as in 1632 by King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Today the city is home

to several highly-ranked universities and educational institutions.

Roughly one fifth of Tartu’s 100,000 inhabitants are students. Because the 18th- and 19th-century Old Town is packed with university buildings and lecture halls, it’s often abuzz with students who flock the streets after their lectures or when it’s time to unwind. Thanks to this, Tartu has a rich café and bar culture, which means you can always find a suitable place to meet up with friends, read a good book or just relax.

Students also enrich the city’s everyday life with events that show off their youthful energy and thirst for academic knowledge. The Spring and Autumn Student Days, each involving an entire week of crazy activities and competitions, give Tartu’s entire population a chance to feel young again. During these festivals, a hundred homemade boats – most of them barely recognisable as boats – full of students in pink flowery dresses racing down the Emajõgi River in ten degree weather doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. It’s no wonder Tartu is also called ‘the city of good thoughts’.

With over a thousand years of history and cultural heritage behind it, Tartu has accumulated a vast number of cultural monuments and sights worth seeing. In its charming Old Town,

centred around the picturesque Town Hall Square, everything is within easy walking distance. You can take a romantic stroll over Toome hill and see its 13th-century cathedral ruins or walk

around the Jaani Cultural Quarter, site of the unique St. John’s Church and its thousands of terracotta statues. St. Anthony’s Guild has numerous arts and crafts workshops where you

can test your own nimble fingers or watch masters at work.

The City of Culture

With over a thousand years of history and cultural heritage behind it, Tartu has accumulated a vast number of cultural monuments and sights worth seeing. In its charming Old Town, centred around the picturesque Town Hall Square, everything is within easy walking distance. You can take a romantic stroll over Toome hill and see its 13th-century cathedral ruins or walk around the Jaani Cultural Quarter, site of the unique St. John’s Church and its thousands of terracotta statues. St. Anthony’s Guild has numerous arts and crafts workshops where you can test your own nimble fingers or watch masters at work.

The more than 20 museums in Tartu – and many more just outside the city – can keep you happily occupied for weeks. You can visit the dreaded KGB cells, end up in the university’s historic lock-up, take a sip of brew in the A. Le Coq Beer Museum or relive your childhood in the Tartu Toy Museum.

If your feet get tired, you can always give them a rest on the spongy, untouched marshes and water meadows of Tartu County. Wireless Internet is provided, of course.

From Tartu, it takes no time at all to reach the Lake Peipus region, home to several Russian Old Believers’ communities renowned for their traditional onions and fish, archaic icons and religious songs.

The City of ScienceFor centuries, Tartu has been a centre of scientific knowledge and education. Numerous

world-famous scientists have lived and worked in Tartu and the list is ever-growing. Today, the University of Tartu accounts for more than half of Estonia’s scientific output, including

publications and doctoral degrees. The University of Tartu is ranked among the top 3% of the world’s universities and has also reached the top 1% of most-cited universities and

scientific institutions in numerous fields of science.

In addition to its student cafés and bars, the city centre is now sprouting innovative, knowledge-based companies that have been making waves on the global tech scene and

have given Ülikooli (University) Street the nickname ‘The Silicon (V)alley of Tartu’.

Given all the heady work going on with the Estonian Genome Project, student satellites, robot mannequins and the like, it is good to know that Tartu hasn’t forgotten that science has a fun and playful side too. The AHHAA Science Centre will leave you amazed and giggling for days, whatever your age. And at the renovated Tartu Old Observatory, you can gaze across the vast distances of space through the most powerful telescopes of their time.

If you’re unlucky enough to slip and fall while visiting Estonia, Tartu is probably the best place to do it. The city has long been renowned as a centre of expertise in medical research,

health care and health technologies. All the greatest medical minds and equipment are concentrated here, making Tartu University Hospital the largest provider of medical care

in Estonia as well as the nation’s leader in medical science and education.

The new, modern core hospital facility employs a staff of 600 doctors and uses the latest technical equipment available – and some still under development – in its various

research laboratories such as the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology and the Estonian Nanotechnologies Competence Centre.

The City of Medicine

This focus on health sciences and technologies helps Tartu doctors in their everyday health care work, making it easer, for example, to perform lung transplants or use a newly created cataract diagnosis apparatus. It has also given rise to internationally acclaimed projects like the Estonian Genome Project, one of the world’s largest gene banks. The project has collected 50,000 tissue samples, representing the genetic data of 5% of the entire adult population of Estonia.

Tartu Convention Bureau Raekoja Sq 9 51004 Tartu, Estonia Ph +372 744 1464 E-mail: conference@visittartu.com

The Tartu Convention Bureau is a member of the Estonian

Convention Bureau

| Printed by environmentally friendly printinghouse Ecoprint

www.visittartu.com/conference