notes:
The traces of ancient settlements at the site of modern Toila are marked by a sacred grove on a high coastal cliff and a sacred stone in Oru Park. The oldest Estonian stone burial ground was found on the site of the present Toila cemetery.
Local burials were divided into two types according to their age: II – IV and VII – VIII centuries AD. e.
The first mention of Toila dates back to 1428 (Tulis, village). Toils is mentioned in 1547, Thoila (manor) in 1688. The village, located about six kilometers east of the manor, began to take shape at the end of the 19th century (about 1900, Toila was mentioned). Back in 1871, it belonged to the Toila manor, and at the beginning of the 20th century it belonged to the Voka manor. In the middle of the 20th century, the village received the status of a settlement.
Toila became a summer resort at the end of the 19th century. The first dozens of summer cottages were built in the 1870s; in the second half of the century, a harbor was built at the mouth of the Pühajõgi River, known among the locals as the “Kuninga muul”. In 1914, the number of holidaymakers exceeded a thousand people, while the number of residents was about 500 people. After the First World War, the number of holidaymakers from Russia sharply decreased, and only a few hundred people, mainly the Estonian intelligentsia, rested in Toila.
At the end of the 19th century, Russian merchant Grigory Eliseev (who owned a shop on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg) bought land for his new summer residence in Toila-Oru, then part of the Toila settlement. A palace was erected in the style of the Italian Renaissance, designed by Gabriel Baranovsky, and a large park, designed by Georg Kufaldt. From 1934 to 1940, the palace, known as the Oru Palace, was used as the summer residence of the first President of the Republic of Estonia, Konstantin Päts. The palace was destroyed during the Second World War.
Notable personalities
The Russian poet Igor Severyanin lived in the village from 1918 to 1935, and has been there since 1913.
Estonian President Konstantin Päts used the Oru Palace as a summer residence from 1934 to 1940.
The Russian writer Fyodor Sologub lived in dachas in Toila before the First World War.
