The area of present Tartu had been first recorded in 1030 by chroniclers of Kievan Rus.

Yaroslav I the Wise, Prince of Kiev, built his own fort here, and named it Yuryev (literally "Yury's" – Yury (a Russified form of George) being Yaroslav's Christian name).

Kievan rulers had then collected tribute from the surrounding ancient Estonian county of Ugaunia, possibly until 1061, when, according to chronicles, Yuryev is burned down by another tribe of Chudes (Sosols), a term historically applied in the early Russian annals to several Finnic peoples in the area of what is now Estonia, Karelia and northwestern Russia.

Troops led by Estonian resistance fighter Lembitu of Lehola destroy a garrison of missionaries in the historical Estonian region of Sakala.

…Dorpat (Tartu), some of which today still retain many Hansa buildings and bear the style of their Hanseatic days.

Most have been founded under Lübeck law, which provides that they have to appeal in all legal matters to Lübeck's city council.

Northern Estonia under Swedish rule is incorporated into the Duchy of Estland.

The southern part, together with northern Latvia, becomes known as Livland.

This division of Estonian lands will last until 1917.

The German-based nobility in both areas retains and even strengthens its position under Swedish suzerainty.

Meanwhile, the Estonian peasants see their lot worsen as more and more of their land and output are appropriated by seigniorial estates.

Still, during the Swedish era, Estonian education gets its start with the founding of Tartu University in 1632 and the establishment of the first Estonian parish schools in the 1680s.

Although the population also begins to grow during this period of peace, war and suffering once again are not far away.

Swedish hegemony during the late seventeenth century has become overextended, making the Swedes' holdings a prime target for a newly expansionist Russia.

Peter I (the Great) (r. 1682-1725), in his first attempt to conquer Estland and Livland, during the Great Northern War (1700-09), meets with defeat at Narva at the hands of Sweden's Charles XII (r. 1697-1718).

A second campaign in 1708 sees Peter introduce a scorched-earth policy across many parts of the area.

The outcome is victory for Russia in 1710 and acquisition of a "window to the West."

In taking control of Estland and Livland for what will be the next two hundred years, tsarist Russia recognizes the rights and privileges of the local German nobility, whose members amount to only a small fraction of the population.

Although the extent of the nobles' autonomy in the two areas is always contested, especially under Catherine II (the Great) (r. 1762-96), the Baltic Germans do develop a strong loyalty to the Russian tsars as guarantors of their landed privileges.

German control over the Estonian peasantry reaches its high point during the eighteenth century.

Labor overtook taxes-in-kind as the predominant means of controlling the serfs.

The first real reforms of serfdom, which give peasants some rights, takes place in 1804.

In 1816 and 1819, the serfs are formally emancipated in Estland and Livland, respectively.

The "Great Fire" of Tartu occurs in 1775.

It starts in the backyard of Knights Street (Rüütli tänav) near St. John's Church.

A strong wind allows the fire to spread from building to building, and the wooden bridges allow the fire to cross the river to do further damage.

Nearly two hundred wooden buildings are destroyed and over forty stone buildings.

The city is further damaged when eighteen buildings are purposefully destroyed to create fire breaks.

At the end of the fire only one hundred and sixty buildings remain: most of these are to the north of the city.

There are only forty left standing in the former center of the city.

Uppsala House, which is near St. John's church, will claim to be one of the few buildings now remaining that date from before the fire.

Some of its timbers have been dated to 1750.

Following the fire the city begins rebuilding.

The rules that had required that there be no new stone buildings are reversed and it is now required to construct not only new buildings but also fences and outbuildings without using wood.

Catherine the Great finds twenty-five thousand rubles to ease the situation in Tartu after the fire, and the money is used to build a stone bridge across the river.

The remains of this bridge can still be seen beneath the river Emajõgi but the main part of the bridge will be destroyed during the Second World War.

Tartu had lost most of its major stone buildings when they were blown up in September 1708 on the orders of Peter the Great during the Great Northern War.

The Russian tsar had ordered that the buildings in Tartu (then called Dorpat) should be mined to prevent the Swedes from using the town as a military base.

This was just one of the sieges which Tartu was subjected to during its history, but this time the city had been left burning and in ruins.

When the war finished, the population had returned to Tartu, and the desperate need for houses had created an abundance of new wooden buildings.

The buildings had to be built of wood as the Tsar had laid orders that no stone buildings were to be built anywhere except in the new Russian capital St. Petersburg.

The first large fire had occurred in 1763.

The following year Catherine the Great had visited, and some rebuilding had taken place.

Collaboration between Jöns Jacob Berzelius and Gottfried Wilhelm Osann, a German-Russian chemist who has taught chemistry and medicine at the University of Tartu in Estonia from 1823, nearly leads to the discovery of ruthenium in 1828.

They dissolve platinum ore from the Ural Mountains in aqua regia and sift through the insoluble residue.

Where Berzelius finds nothing, Osann thinks he's detected three new metals and names them pluranium (concatenation of platina and Ural), ruthenium (after the Latin name for Russia) and polinium (from the Greek word polia, meaning gray-haired, for its residue color).

Unfortunately, the quantity of the metals is too small to isolate, and the existence of ruthenium will not be verified until 1844 by the Russian chemist Karl Klaus, who is often credited with the discovery of the metal.