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The New Building

“The National Museum is like a home—it takes a little from everyone, but gives a great deal in return.” —Tõnis Lukas

The Estonian National Museum at Raadi opened its doors on 1 October 2016. A home built for the Estonian people and culture serves several purposes at once. First, a home shelters and protects, keeping people together through shared activity. As Estonia’s national museum, the ENM helps interpret Estonian identity, carries the nation’s core values, and safeguards continuity. Its way of working is through cooperation and dialogue between cultures. At the same time, the ENM is an open and inclusive learning and cultural environment in Tartu, offering enriching and engaging activities for all generations. Visitors can explore both a material and a virtual world that invites them to discover, reflect, and take part. In this way, the museum helps create a link between younger and older generations within families.

The Museum in Numbers

But before the new building was completed, let us briefly return to the time when our shared home first took on clear physical outlines. In 2006, Dan Dorell, Lina Ghotmeh and Tsuyoshi Tane won first prize in an international architectural competition with a design titled “Memory Field” (Mälestuste väli). The museum is 355.8 metres long and 71.7 metres wide, while its height varies between 2.4 and 15.3 metres.

This new home is like a long journey from a more open end into a narrower section, symbolising a time-travel experience from the present—rich in memories—back to the Stone Age, when our knowledge of our own past is more limited. This also offers a small hint at our new permanent exhibition “Encounters” (Kohtumised): a route that considers all the pivotal turning points in the story of how Estonian identity has taken shape.

The museum’s main permanent exhibition occupies 3,781 m² of the building’s total area. And because the museum is large enough, our Finno-Ugric kindred peoples also have their place here: their cultures are preserved in a separate permanent exhibition spanning nearly 1,000 m². Beyond the two permanent exhibitions, we also offer the joy of discovery through temporary exhibitions and a gallery, which together total 1,317 m². In addition, the new building provides extensive space for storage: 8,139 m² on the museum’s lower level is dedicated to collections.

As the saying goes, “He who keeps, has.” The Estonian people and culture truly possess a great wealth of material heritage—objects to be passed on to future generations to safeguard, and to protect from the wear of time.

Facts from the Building Process

Building footprint: 21,973 m²