Christmas at the Niguliste Museum
For the seventh year in a row, the Niguliste Museum, a branch of the Art Museum of Estonia in the heart of Tallinn’s Old Town, invites you to participate in a fairy-tale-like Christmas season.
Christmas at Niguliste has become an eagerly awaited tradition and marks the beginning of the winter holiday season at the museum. To celebrate the beginning of Advent, the interior decoration company Shishi will again decorate the museum’s Christmas tree, but this year the anticipation of Christmas will be different at the Niguliste Museum. The museum, which was reopened in March, will bring together the Middle Ages and the present day: for the first time at Christmas, the spire of the church will be open to visitors, with the glass elevator bringing everybody to a level below the heavens where a magnificent view of the Old Town decorated for Christmas will be revealed.
We will start the Christmas season with the lighting of the Niguliste Christmas tree on 3 December, the first Sunday of Advent. For the seventh year in a row, the Christmas tree on display at the Niguliste Museum will be decorated by the interior decoration company Shishi. As has become customary, the theme of the Christmas tree will not be revealed until the lighting ceremony.
This year, the focal point of Christmas at the Niguliste Church will be the Retable of the High Altar, which was created in the workshop of the Lübeck master Hermen Roode in 1481 and tells the story of St Nicholas. We welcome visitors to join us for special guided tours dedicated to this extraordinary medieval work of art. The two Christmas tours (4 and 21 December) are meant for individual visitors, families and smaller groups. They take place in the evenings, when the museum is closed for regular visitors.
The traditional Christmas decorations workshop will take place on 10 December, the second Sunday of Advent.
Besides the traditional “Half an hour of organ music”, during the Christmas period, we will delight everybody with special organ concerts. Over the course of the four Advent weekends (on 3, 10, 17 and 23 December), organ music will be performed throughout the day at the Niguliste Museum by the renowned musicians Tiit Kiik and Andres Uibo.