Keila

Keila is a town and urban municipality in Harju County in north-western Estonia, 25 kilometres southwest of Tallinn. As of 2025 it has a population of 11,024 inhabitants, and it is also the seat of the separate surrounding Keila Parish. Traces of human settlement go back two to three thousand years BC, and the village was established along the Keila river around a thousand years ago. After the Danish conquest of northern Estonia in 1219, Keila was chosen as the site of a parish church, and the first written mention of the place comes from Danish records of 1241. The Livonian Order built a small fort near the church, the settlement was destroyed in the Livonian War of 1558 to 1583, and plague and famine in 1601 and 1602 reduced it to a small church village for about three centuries. The first song festival was held in Keila in 1885, and in Soviet times a tank regiment base stood on the outskirts of the town, later replaced by a residential district.