Gloria Palace Building in Tallinn Marks 100th Anniversary — ERR News
The building of Tallinn's Downtown Theater, where the luxurious Gloria Palace cinema opened in 1926, marks its centenary in 2026. The cinema is located near Freedom Square in Tallinn, Estonia, and despite the bombing of the city in March 1944, it has largely retained its original appearance, ERR News reports.
A cinema as a palace
Gloria Palace was Estonia's first and only luxurious cinema of its time. It was built by Leon Falstein, who had previously opened a cinema in Riga. According to guide Oksana Talisainen, the Riga building had an ivory-colored hall with one thousand seats and life-size golden palm sculptures.
Having earned money in Riga, Falstein invited architects from Europe to Tallinn and ordered that no expense be spared on the new cinema. After Gloria Palace opened, Estonian architects viewed its interior critically: newspapers called the style a return to Byzantium that did not correspond to Estonian culture. At the same time, they praised the facade created by Estonian artist Jaan Koort.
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Gold dust and egg yolks
At the final stage of construction, Falstein was almost out of money. According to Talisainen, it was decided to complete the decoration with a mixture of gold dust and egg yolks, following a principle used in Byzantine icon painting. Workers bought up eggs at Tallinn markets, separated the yolks and mixed them with gold dust to decorate the cinema.
Expensive tickets allowed visitors to watch two films in one visit. The first feature film was accompanied by an orchestra, while during the intermission visitors walked around the foyer and socialized. In 1930, a dance club with a restaurant and a cigar room opened in the building's basement, which, according to the guide, generated more income than the cinema.
During the March 1944 bombing of Tallinn, thousands of bombs fell on the city center, but none hit Gloria Palace. Therefore, most of the elements theater visitors see today are original; only the seats in the main hall are a different color.
