Keila

Keila is a town and an urban municipality in Harju County in north-western Estonia. It is also the administrative centre of the surrounding rural municipality Keila Parish. The oldest traces of human settlement in Keila trace back 2000 to 3000 years BC. Around 1000 years ago the village of Keila was established along the Keila river. In 1219 the Danish conquered Northern-Estonia and chose Keila as the site on which the Vomentakŋ parochial Revala county church was to be built. The first church was a small wooden structure dedicated primarily to St. Michael which was replaced with a stone church at the end of the 13th century. Subsequently, the first written mention of Keila (Keikŋl) comes from Danish evaluation book writings in 1241.

In the 15th-16th century a settlement comprising some tens of buildings and a hundred people formed around the church. At the same time the Livonian Order built a small fort south-east of the church on jõesaare (Known today as Jõepark). Ruins of the fort were first excavated in 1976 with continued finds up to 2007.