Maardu

Maardu is a town and municipality in Harju County in northern Estonia, about fifteen kilometres east of the capital Tallinn, and it forms part of the Tallinn metropolitan area. The town covers roughly 22.8 square kilometres and has about 16,800 inhabitants, which makes it the seventh largest town in the country. It is best known for its industrial and port setting: the Port of Muuga, the largest cargo port in Estonia, lies partly within its limits. Maardu grew around phosphate mining and chemical processing from the late 1930s and received town status in 1980 after a period as an urban-type settlement. Its population is unusually Russian-speaking for Estonia, a legacy of Soviet-era industrial migration. The old Maardu manor, a baroque manor house traced to 1389, stands just outside the town.