Peppersack

Peppersack is a medieval-style restaurant inside a medieval merchant’s house. Its name is derived from the dismissive nickname aristocrats in Toompea gave their more industrious mercantile neighbours.

Witness the swordfight (every evening at 8 pm) in the lively, historic ambience of this 14th-century venue. Order Alderman Johan's Special or Master Hansu's Feast and follow it with some mulled wine.

It has a rustic grill and beer hall - Three Frog Grill and is open from early in the morning for fresh bakery and coffee until late in the evening. It is conveniently located near the old market square - a three minute walk from your hotel.

Address: Viru 2 / Vana turg 6, Tallinn

e-mail: peppersack@peppersack.ee

Mon-Sat: 8-24

Sun: 9-23

History of this restaurant:

1370 - The oldest extant writing about two buildings that were situated in the registered immovable: a stone storehouse (stenhus) on the left that belonged to a tradesman TIDEMANUS CROWEL and a wooden dwelling house on the right that Tidemanus Crowel sold to the alderman JOHAN DUDERSTADT. Tidemanus’s storehouse occupied less than a half of the streetward part of the present building at 2 Viru Street. The storehouse has repeatedly mentioned in the historical documents as a granary. Consequently, it was mainly meant for keeping here the major transit goods — rye.

1430 – The stone storehouse belongs to GERLICH WITTE, master mason in Tallinn, who has perpetuated himself in the history of the city as the constructor of the slim steeple for the church of Pühavaimu.

1431 – For replacing the wooden house with a stone building the tradesman GERKE borrows 300 Riga marks: 100 from the Jaani alms-house of lepers, 100 from the Pühavaimu alms-house and 100 from a private person.

1434 – GERKE’s modern stone house on the 40 m immovable is ready: storehouse/residential building with a two-room basic plan is typical to the Gothic art style in Tallinn: huge high hallway with a kitchen-mantel chimney and behind it a smaller lower family room (Latin dornse from the word dormire — to sleep). The living-room was heated by warm air from a cobblestone oven or hypocaust in the cellar. A fireplace helped to light up the room. Under the streetward gable there was a two-storey storage place where transit goods and the family’s annual grain supplies were kept. The façade is a match for a church: there is an ogival portal, hallway windows with stone crosses and stone edges and two merchant hatches with segmental arched upper cover. Miraculously the decorative bands of carved vines on the gable edges have preserved — the last such kinds of decorations of Gothic style in Tallinn. Into the wedge-like courtyard of the storehouse/residential building at 6 Vana turg, some household buildings were also constructed: on the lower storey, there was a stable for horses, a cart shed, a shed for firewood and a barn; on the upper storey there were living quarters for servants, repositories for hay and who knows for what else.