Welcome Tour: Treasures of medieval art
The tour in English opens the treasure chest of Estonian medieval art. The collection in the Niguliste Museum holds the most remarkable and valuable part of the medieval and early modern ecclesiastical art of Estonia. The tour is held on December 6th, on Saint Nicholas Day.
The tour centers on one of the gems of the collection, the double-winged retable of the high altar of St. Nicholas’ Church, which was made in the workshop of Herman Rode, a master from Lübeck, and which arrived in Tallinn in 1481. The museum is housed in St. Nicholas’ Church, built in the 13th century, and is one of the few museums in northern Europe located in a former church building. The stars of the museum’s collection are late medieval altarpieces from northern Germany and the Netherlands, and Bernt Notke’s painting Danse Macabre from the late 15th century. A particularly valuable part of the collection is silverware that used to belong to churches, guilds and the Brotherhood of Black Heads, currently displayed in the Silver Chamber.
