The Gustav Adolf Grammar School is a

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

Tallinn Tallinn is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Estonia, most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a Tallinn Bay, bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and ...

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

.Overview of Gustav Adolf Grammar School
Gustav Adolfi Gümnaasium Swedish king

Gustavus Adolphus Gustavus Adolphus (9 December N.S 19 December">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Old Style and New Style dates">N.S 19 December15946 November Old Style and New Style dates">N.S 16 November] 1632), also known in English as ...

established it as the Reval Gymnasium in 1631. It is one of the oldest extant secondary schools in Europe.

History

1631–1651

King Gustavus Adolphus founded the school as the

Reval Tallinn is the capital and most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and administratively lies in the Harju ''maakond'' (co ...

Gymnasium. Until 1645 it consisted of four forms: quarta, tertia, secunda and prima, in ascending order. The teaching staff consisted of four professors and two colleagues (teachers of quarta and tertia). Pupils were taught

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

, poetry,

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, and

Ancient Hebrew language Ancient Hebrew (ISO 639-3 code ) is a blanket term for pre-modern varieties of the Hebrew language: * Paleo-Hebrew (such as the Siloam inscription), a variant of the Phoenician alphabet * Biblical Hebrew (including the use of Tiberian vocalization ...

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

etc.

Architecture

The school buildings were originally constructed in the 13th century as a

nunnery A convent is an enclosed community of monks, nuns, friars or religious sisters. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The term is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican Comm ...

. Later the buildings has been rebuilt and expanded on. The latest renovation, completed in 1999, was intended to recover its historical appearance and value. The school is adjacent to the 13th century Tallinn Old Town city wall, which gives the whole complex a unique historic atmosphere and beauty.

Education

Today, the school provides both primary and secondary education. In the secondary stage ( gymnasium) students can choose between

natural sciences Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

, Swedish, English-Mathematics and English-French direction.

Notable faculty

Alfred Rosenberg Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...

(1893–1946) was a short-term teacher at the gymnasium during the German occupation of Estonia in 1918.

References

External links

* *https://web.archive.org/web/20050914191317/http://www.einst.ee/Ea/architecture/lankots1.html {{Coord, 59.439912, N, 24.743174, E, type:edu_region:EE, display=title 1631 establishments in Sweden Educational institutions established in the 1630s Schools in Tallinn History of Tallinn 17th-century establishments in Estonia