Lääne County Travel Guide

One of the largest medieval episcopal fortresses in the Baltic states — a 13th-century complex with a roofless cathedral nave, a moat you can walk around, and a tower with views over the bay. The White Lady ghost legend makes evening visits doubly atmospheric. The old wooden resort town extends from the castle gates to a promenade built for Tchaikovsky's 1867 visit.

Estonia's premier wetland reserve and one of Europe's most important waterbird staging areas — over 270 species recorded. In spring, hundreds of thousands of geese, swans, and waders fill the flooded meadows and shallow bay. Observation towers give sweeping views across the reed beds. Matsalu is the kind of place where three hours disappear watching a horizon full of birds.

Estonia's oldest seaside spa tradition: therapeutic mud cures began here in the 1820s, and the wooden promenade along the shallow inner bay remains one of the most charming coastal walks in the Baltics. The African Beach — a patch of sand on the inner lagoon — warms to swimming temperature faster than anywhere else in the country.

A narrow peninsula historically home to Swedish-speaking Estonians who fled during WWII. Quiet coastal villages, traditional windmills, sea meadows bright with orchids in June, and a genuine sense of being off the tourist map. The village of Birkas has an old Swedish church and an open-air museum telling the story of the Estonian Swedes.

A remarkably intact medieval castle sitting on a low mound surrounded by a broad water-filled moat — one of the most picturesque castle silhouettes in Estonia. The castle served as a fortress, a prison, and a manor. The surrounding lime-tree park is one of the finest in western Estonia and is beautiful in autumn.

Estonia's fourth-largest island — a place of meadow orchids, wheel-cross graveyards, juniper pastures, and the kind of quiet that doesn't exist on the mainland. A car ferry from Rohuküla serves the island; once there you explore entirely empty roads through one of the country's most preserved cultural landscapes.