Raeapteek

The Raeapteek (English: Town Hall Pharmacy; German: Ratsapotheke) is in the center of Tallinn city, Estonia.

Opposite the Town Hall, at house number 11, it is one of the oldest continuously running pharmacies in Europe, having always been in business in the same house since the early 15th century. It is also the oldest commercial enterprise and the oldest medical establishment in Tallinn.

The first known image of the Town-Hall Pharmacy is an oil painting by Oldekop, showing Tallinn's Town Hall Square in 1800. The first photos of the building date from 1889.

Historians have not been able to determine when exactly the pharmacy opened, but the oldest records available show that the Raeapteek was already on its third owner in 1422. Some scholars consider the opening year to be 1415.

In a town council's notebook, there is an entry by a chemist named Nuclawes who stated that the owners of the pharmacy are 10 honourable men, the majority of whom are aldermen. Other documents dated after 1422 refer that the first chemist here was Johann Molner and that medicines were already being sold at the pharmacy in the second half of the 15th century.

The Burchart (Burchard) family are those most closely associated with the pharmacy's history, having run the business for over 10 generations, spanning over 325 years from around 1582 to 1911.

Between 1579 and 1581, a Hungarian immigrant named Johann Burchart Both Belavary de Sykava, moved to Tallinn from his home town of Pressburg (present day Bratislava) and obtained a lease from the city council to run the business of the pharmacy. He was to be the first in a long dynasty of pharmacists that were to run the Raeapteek.

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