Holdings
The City Archives contain 1,302 archives. These contain a total of 474,631 archival items (as of 31 December 2016), with documents from the 13th century up to 2015.
The “Short directory to the Archival Collections of the Estonian SSR Tallinn State Central Archives” published in 1976 provides an overview of the archival holdings as of 1 January 1976, and the “Register of Tallinn City Archive Collections” provides an overview as of 1 January 2002.
The latest information on the City Archive holdings is available from its electronic database (available only at the City Archives) and the electronic information system of Estonian archives AIS (http://ais.ra.ee).
Digitalised documents of the City Archives can be accessed through the digitalised archival resource web SAAGA supervised by the National Archives (www.ra.ee/saaga ).
The archival records of Tallinn from the 13th to the 16th century are written primarily in Latin or Middle Low German;
the majority of the documents from the 17th to the 19th century in High German.
Starting from the 1880s most of the documents are in Russian;
and starting from 1917–1918, primarily in Estonian.