Illuka was founded in 1657. In the 1800s it passed to the Dieckhoffs, who in 1885–1888 built a stately new one-story stone house to designs by Friedrich Modi. The Historicist building has a Gothic Revival stepped gable and round-arched windows typical of the Neo-Renaissance. Most of the outbuildings were renewed at the same time, and a large park was laid out south of the house. In 1912 the Dieckhoff brothers sold the manor to Baron Claus von Nottbeck, who sold it to the Estonian state in 1921.
