Hotel room at Sokos Hotel Viru, Tallinn, Estonia

Sokos Hotel Viru is a

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and ...

. Originally owned by Intourist and called Viru Hotel, it was first opened on 5 May 1972. The hotel building was the first high-rise building in Estonia. Today, the hotel is connected to the

shopping centre A shopping center (American English) or shopping centre (Commonwealth English), also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof. The first known collec ...

, Viru Keskus, and is owned by Sokos Hotels. The

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

gave the project of Viru Hotel to the construction company Repo Oy from

Savonlinna Savonlinna (, , ; sv, Nyslott, lit=New Castle) is a town and a municipality of inhabitants in the southeast of Finland, in the heart of the Saimaa lake region, which is why the city is also nicknamed the "Capital of Saimaa". Together with Mikke ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Both ...

in 1969 and construction of the hotel started in July. However, the company went bankrupt in the middle of construction after a fire broke out on the top floors of the hotel in December 1969, so the state had to find another construction company, and financial backing for the project. The new company Haka Oy finished the hotel in May 1972. The project resulted in a new construction project in Pääjärvi that same year, and later new construction projects in Enso and Kostamus (all these being in the

Republic of Karelia The Republic of Karelia (russian: Респу́блика Каре́лия, Respublika Kareliya; ; krl, Karjalan tašavalta; ; fi, Karjalan tasavalta; vep, Karjalan Tazovaldkund, Ludic: ''Kard’alan tazavald''), also known as just Karelia (ru ...

). During the Soviet era, the 23rd floor of the hotel housed a

KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

radio centre, used to eavesdrop and spy on the hotel guests. Sixty of the hotel rooms had concealed espionage devices, and even some of the tables in the restaurant had microphones. The KGB left the hotel in a hurry right before the independence of Estonia in August 1991, but the secret rooms were not found until 1994. The former radio centre is now a museum. In 2003, the hotel was sold to the

S Group The S Group ( fi, S-ryhmä, sv, S-gruppen) is a Finnish retailing cooperative organisation with its head office in Helsinki. Founded in 1904, it consists of 20 regional cooperatives operating all around Finland in addition to SOK, ''Suomen Osu ...

, a Finnish

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

ing

cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-contro ...

organisation. It now has 516 rooms.Viisi tähteä 21.5.2007 : Viru-hotelli tiennäyttäjänä SOK:n kansainvälistyessä

References

External links

Official site
{{coord, 59, 26, 12, N, 24, 45, 18, E, type:landmark_region:EE, display=title Hotels in Tallinn Hotels established in 1972 Hotel buildings completed in 1972 1972 establishments in Estonia Hotels built in the Soviet Union Kesklinn, Tallinn

Further reading

References

External links