Guided tour in Swedish: St. Nicholas Day special! The retable of the high altar of St. Nicholas’ Church
Guided tour in Swedish The guided tour that will take place on St. Nicholas Day will introduce the fascinating history and iconography of the Rode altar. The tour guide is the curator Merike Kurisoo. There is a tradition of celebrating St. Nicholas Day by keeping the retable of the high altar of St. Nicholas’ (Niguliste) Church open for the entire day.
The retable of the high altar of St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn is one of the most magnificent and best preserved late-medieval northern German altar retables in Europe. The altarpiece was commissioned from the workshop of the Lübeck master painter Hermen Rode, and it was completed between 1478 and 1481. The work depicts more than forty different saints and characters from the Bible. The retable cost 1250 Riga marks: enough to build two or three stone houses in the city. St. Nicholas’ Church is dedicated to Nicholas of Bari, the patron saint of children, young girls, seafarers and merchants. The Niguliste Museum celebrates the commemoration day of St. Nicholas twice a year: on 6 December, the date of the saint’s death, and on 9 May, the date his remains reached Bari.
Guided tours in English, Swedish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish and Danish will be carried out by the Art Museum’s curators from 9 May to 12 May in the Niguliste Museum and the Adamson-Eric Museum. The tours will introduce Estonian art from the Middle Ages to modern times and provide fascinating insights into Estonian cultural history.
