Places

Narva is Estonia's third city and the easternmost sizeable city in the European Union. In 1944 its old town was almost entirely destroyed; the city was rebuilt and largely repopulated through labour migration. Today Narva is a mainly Russian-speaking city inside the Estonian state — that doubleness is the key to the whole region.

Here the Narva River reaches the Gulf of Finland and loses its function as a border. From the late 19th century the town was a summer resort for the Saint Petersburg intelligentsia, later a Soviet sanatorium town. The beach is long and sandy, with pine forest starting immediately behind it.

Sillamäe was built after the Second World War around uranium processing and was a closed town for decades. Its central square, colonnaded culture house and stairway down to the sea form one of Estonia's most intact Stalinist urban ensembles. The port still operates as a cargo port.

Jõhvi is the administrative and transport centre of the region: trains run from here to Tallinn and Narva, buses to every smaller settlement. Jõhvi Concert House brings international productions that would otherwise stay in Tallinn.

Kohtla-Järve grew around the oil-shale industry in the 20th century and consists of districts physically separated from each other — the most unusually shaped town in Estonia. The semi-coke hills left by the industry are part of the landscape and are now being capped and planted.

Toila-Oru Park descends from the limestone cliff towards the sea; the Estonian president's summer residence stood here until it was destroyed in the war. West of it begins the Ontika cliff and Valaste waterfall — the highest in Estonia. Industrial landscape and protected coast sit twenty kilometres apart here.

Alutaguse municipality covers much of the county's south: Estonia's largest continuous forest, the Kurtna lake district with more than forty lakes, and the northern shore of Lake Peipsi with the sands of Kauksi. Population is thin; there are more bears and beavers than in most of Europe.

Tallinn is not part of Ida-Viru, but most visitors begin here: a plane or ferry, then a train to Jõhvi and Narva. The train to Narva takes about two and a half hours and is itself part of the story — Estonia changes outside the window.