Murru limestone mining quarry was established in 1938 at the borough of Rummu in northern Estonia. Limestone was mined by convicts of the adjacent Murru prison until the restoration of Estonian independence over 20 years ago. Once mining was no longer necessary and draining of water was stopped, the quarry filled up by natural water and turned the quarry into what is also known by ‘blue lagoon’. Abandonment of the quarry happened so fast that even some machinery was sunken along with the building complex. Perimeter of the prison was decreased to exclude the blue lagoon and the prison remained active until the end of year 2012.

By the way, to get a look inside this prison, You can check out ‘Crazy Law‘ music video of Kazaky ;)

Residues of the mining were piled up next to the quarry forming a 70 meters high hill. It is as high as the relative height of one of our highest mountains Väike Munamägi (laughing Austrians may read ‘mountains’ as ‘bumps’). Yet, while driving in the southern Estonia one may not distinguish our highest mountains on the generally bumpy landscape, then the artificial ..erection.. by the Murru quarry is rather remarkable and a cool place to see and mount.

I had heard of the place before but it seemed to take forever to actually go there myself. Finally, after seeing Siiri’s phone snapshot from the sky on her Facebook wall, I think it was the very next day that I looked the place up on map and drove there.

I know it may seem like a flow of typos, ..murru, rummu, murru, rummu. It was rather confusing for me too, but turned out that they are almost the same by location :)

Photos (except for Siiri’s pic) taken on August 25th.