On the coast just outside Tallinn stand the ruins of a convent of the Bridgettine order, one of the largest monastic foundations of the medieval Baltic. What survives is essentially a silhouette: the immense western gable, pierced by tall openings, still rises to its full height, while the walls of the church and the outlines of the conventual buildings remain at a lower level, open to the sky. The community was destroyed in the wars that reshaped the region in the sixteenth century, and the site has stood as a ruin ever since, quarried, drawn, romanticised and eventually protected. Today the empty shell serves as a setting for concerts and summer events. The episode films the ruin for what makes it exceptional on screen, the scale of the surviving gable, the northern light passing straight through the building, and the archaeology of a religious community reduced to its ground plan.
