Emajõgi: Tartu’s Lost Trading Harbor
Find the viewpoint and reveal the working riverfront where wooden cargo boats once crowded the Emajõgi beside the Kaubahoov.
The story
Look first at the water, not the buildings. Today this stretch of the Emajõgi is a promenade. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was part of a working harbor, and the wooden vessels along the bank were not decoration. They were the freight transport of their time.
For centuries, the Emajõgi connected Tartu with Lake Peipus and the waterways leading toward Pskov. In the nineteenth century, the characteristic cargo vessel of this network was the lodi: a broad, shallow-draught wooden barge built to carry heavy loads through rivers and across the lake. At the height of this trade, the Peipus fleet included at least five hundred barges, and more than two hundred could sometimes be seen in Tartu’s harbors at once.
Open Emajõgi in WanderTrails
Walk to the real viewpoint, raise your camera, align the guide with today's view — and watch the past appear over the present, with the full audio story in English, Estonian, or Russian.
