Otepää Parish (Estonian: Otepää vald) is a rural municipality in Valga County, southern Estonia.^[1] It includes the town of Otepää, that is known to be the "winter capital" of Estonia.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Estonian. (August 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Estonian Wikipedia article at [[:et:Otepää vald]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|et|Otepää vald}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts Country, County ...

Otepää Parish Otepää vald
Municipality of Estonia
Otepää Cultural Building
Flag Coat of arms
Otepää Parish within Valga County.
Country	Estonia
County	Valga County
Administrative centre	Otepää
Government
• Mayor	Jaanus Barkala
Area
• Total	520 km2 (200 sq mi)
Population  (1 January 2019)
• Total	6,456
• Density	12/km2 (32/sq mi)
ISO 3166 code	EE-557
Website	www.otepaa.ee

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The parish was formed in 2017 by merging of the former Otepää parish, Sangaste parish, 7 villages of Palupera parish and 12 villages of Puka parish.

The Parish has one city, two small boroughs and 52 villages.

Town

Otepää

Small boroughs

Puka - Sangaste

Villages

Ädu - Arula- Ilmjärve - Kääriku - Kähri - Kassiratta - Kastolatsi - Kaurutootsi - Keeni - Kibena - Koigu - Kolli - Komsi - Kuigatsi - Kurevere - Lauküla - Lossiküla - Lutike - Mäeküla - Mägestiku - Mägiste - Mäha - Märdi - Makita - Meegaste - Miti - Neeruti - Nõuni - Nüpli - Otepää küla - Pedajamäe - Päidla - Pilkuse - Plika - Põru - Prange - Pringi - Pühajärve - Räbi - Raudsepa - Restu - Risttee - Ruuna - Sarapuu - Sihva - Tiidu - Tõutsi -Truuta - Vaalu - Vaardi - Vana-Otepää - Vidrike

• Tehvandi Sports Center

• Otepää is first mentioned in writing in the Novgorod Chronicle in 1116.

• The name Otepää (Odenpe, Odempe) means bear's head.

• In 1841, the Pühajärve war took place, where the local peasants started to oppose the landlord.

• In 1941, the Otepää postage stamp was put into circulation in Otepää.

• On October 3, 1991, His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso was in Otepää. He blessed Pühajärve and planted a commemorative oak next to the church.

• Otepää has only one traffic light.