Article series: Experiencing TENET
Experiencing TENET part 1 👈 You are here!
Experiencing TENET part 2
Experiencing TENET part 3
📍 Tallinna Linnahall
🏠 Sadama tn 1, 10415, Tallinn
⏰ Permanently closed, rooftop open 24/7
☎️ +3726412250
“We live in a twilight world. And there are no friends at dusk.” It is a phrase every sci-fi fan wants to say out loud once. Of course, I am not talking about Walt Whitman’s A Twilight Song. This is a famous phrase by the protagonist of Christopher Nolan’s TENET.
The unforgettable car chase scene with the “time-inverse” was also shot in Tallinn, Estonia. Retrieved from the official website: https://www. warnerbros.com/movies/tenet
TENET starts with the hardboiled protagonist storming the Kyiv Opera House with police officers. He is not a police officer himself, but works as an American agent on a secret mission. If you have never watched TENET, please stop reading this article and watch it first. Did you know that the first scene in the Kyiv Opera House was shot in Tallinn, Estonia? The “Tallinna Linnahall,” or Tallinn City Hall, is the iconic concrete concert hall located by the sea in Tallinn. Officially named the “V. I. Lenin Tallinn Palace of Culture and Sports” during the Soviet era, it was built as a venue for sailing competitions in the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. It is a gigantic horizontal complex that houses a concert hall and ice skating rink, and it has hosted a lot of famous singers, like A-ha. In recent years, Alan Walker’s music video Faded was shot in the building, as you can see here. This building has been abandoned since 2010 after several failed attempts to renovate or sell the building, and you usually cannot see what is inside the building.
However, there is a way to get inside; a walking tour organised by the Estonian Centre of Architecture, “Venture behind the closed doors of Linnahall”, takes you inside the building with a guide. It is conducted in English, Estonian, or Russian. You can find the upcoming tours here. I want you to see it yourself, so I will not show many pictures in this article.
The front stairs to the entrance. You can see the ferry terminals, the old town, and the skyscrapers in the city centre all at once.
The tour starts outside the building, where the protagonist was waiting to enter the building in the van. From a distance, Tallinna Linnahall’s flat structure seemingly matches the surroundings. But as you get closer, you will be overwhelmed with the brutalistic appearance outside of the building, and a lot of graffiti. The contrast between modern ferry terminals, the medieval old town, and this massive concrete architecture is unforgettable. First, you will walk through the corridor, where there used to be storefronts. They are rented now, and some companies use them as offices. Next, you walk to the cloakroom in the entrance hall. I imagined the old times when people waited in a queue to hand over their jackets, waiting for the orchestra with excitement.
The cloakroom. This is where the protagonist found the mysterious metallic device.
The tour’s climax is the concert hall, where many performances took place in the past. The monotonic semicircular layers surround the hall on the ceiling, and the silence occupies the entire space. We did not go to the box seat where the protagonist found one of his fellow operatives, but you can freely walk around the hall and enjoy the view. After the hall, we followed the path exactly as the protagonist and his team escaped the chaotic terror. I recommend taking a flashlight for the tour since some places do not have lighting.
The concert hall. You can take a seat and enjoy the breathtaking view with nostalgia.
Throughout the tour, I enjoyed our tour guide’s story of her old memories when this building was active and hosted many events. At the same time, I could not help but see the buckets on the floor for catching water leakage, telling me its unknown fate in the future. The building has a complex history. It was designed by Estonian architects, and this place benefited a lot of Estonians. But at the same time it’s still a symbol of the Soviet era. Therefore, some people think it is a negative legacy from the past. “We live in a twilight world,” the protagonist said. “And there are no friends at dusk.” his buddy replied. Renovation, selling, or dismantlement; the conversation of the Tallinna Linnahall goes on, and nobody knows the next step.
Next article 👉
Experiencing TENET part 2 (see more here)
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