The KGB headquarters on Pagari Street

For almost half a century, from 1940, the building at Pagari 1 was the headquarters of the Soviet security police in Estonia, first the NKVD and later the KGB. Thousands of people were interrogated here, and many were sent on to prison camps or to their deaths. The basement windows were bricked up so that no one in the street could hear what went on inside. Tallinners joked that it was the tallest building in town, because from its cellar you could see Siberia. The cellar cells are now a museum.