Museum sights in Turkey
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Archaeology Museum
Inside the cultural Park, this museum displays predominantly classical finds from local sites.
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Museum
Archaeology buffs will make a beeline for the Erzurum Museum, several long blocks southwest of the Yakutiye Seminary. It houses finds from nearby digs.
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B
Military Museum
A park in the military zone at the southern end of the quay houses the Military Museum, also known as the Dardanelles Straits Naval Command Museum (Çanakkale Boğaz Komutanliği Deniz Müzesi). It's free to enter the park, which is open every day and is dotted with guns, cannons and military artefacts.
A sea-facing late-Ottoman building contains informative exhibits on the Gallipoli battles and some war relics, including fused bullets that hit each other in mid-air. Apparently the chances of this happening are something like 160 million to one, which gives a chilling idea of just how much ammunition was being fired.
Nearby is a replica of the Nusrat minelayer (Nusrat Mayın…
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C
Painting & Sculpture Museum
The Painting & Sculpture Museum showcases the cream of Turkish artists. Ranging from angular war scenes to society portraits, the pieces demonstrate that 19th- and 20th-century artistic developments in Turkey paralleled those in Europe, with increasingly abstract form.
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Archaeology Museum
Diyarbakır's original Archaeology Museum was closed at the time of writing, and scheduled to reopen in 2013 in a new location inside the İç Kale. Ask at the Diyarbakır tourist office for an update.
Before the move, the well-presented collection included finds from the Neolithic site of Çayönü (7500–6500 BC), 65km north of Diyarbakır. Also showcased was a decent Urartian collection and relics from the Karakoyunlu and Akkoyunlu, powerful tribal dynasties that ruled much of eastern Anatolia and Iran between 1378 and 1502.
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E
Archaeology Museum
Just over 1.5km south of the otogar, just off the road to Troy, is the Archaeology Museum, also called the Çanakkale Museum (Çanakkale Müzesi).
The best exhibits here are those from Troy and Assos, although the finds from the tumulus at Dardanos, an ancient town some 10km southwest of Çanakkale, are also noteworthy. There's quite a bit on display in the small garden.
Dolmuşes heading down Atatürk Caddesi towards Güzelyalı or Troy will drop you off near the museum for TL1.
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Museum
The museum features some 10-million-year-old teeth from a forerunner of the elephant, unearthed at Mustafapaşa, but the overall collection is uninspiring.
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Vakıf Eserleri Müzesi
The tradition of carpets being gifted to mosques has helped preserve many of Turkey's finest specimens. This extensive collection – which once graced the floors of mosques throughout the country – spent years languishing in the depots of the nation's Vakıf (religious foundation) for safekeeping and was finally put on display to the public in 2007. A must for anyone interested in Turkish textiles, the exhibits also include a fascinating Ottoman manuscript collection, tile-work, metalwork and intricately carved wood panels. All of it is superbly displayed with detailed information panels explaining the history of Turkish crafts.
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Selimiye Foundation Museum
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Sakıp Sabancı Mardin City Museum
Housed in a carefully-restored former army barracks, this superb new museum showcases the fascinating history and culture of Mardin. Excellent English-language translations and effective use of audio and video reinforce how cosmopolitan and multi-cultural the city's past was. Downstairs is used as an art gallery for a rotating series of exhibitions, often including images by iconic Turkish photographers.
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Sahib-i Ata Vakıf Müzesi
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Sabuncuoğlu History of Medicine Museum
Built as a mental hospital in 1309 by Ilduş Hatun, wife of the İlkhanid Sultan Olcaytu, the Darüşşifa (or Bimarhane) may have been the first place to try to treat pychiatric disorders with music. The İlkhans were the successors to Genghis Khan's Mongols, who had defeated the Anatolian Seljuks. Their architecture reflects motifs borrowed from many conquered peoples, and the building is based on the plan of a Seljuk medrese.
The building was used as a hospital until the 18th century. One of the most important physicians who worked here was Serefedin Sabuncuoğlu; the rooms surrounding the courtyard are dedicated to exhibits of his work. The small collection includes…
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Rahmi M Koç Industrial Museum
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Kileciler Evi
Built in 1884, this mansion also has 1950s period pieces among the family heirlooms in its cupboards. The whitewashed interior has been attractively renovated, with exhibits including family photos, carpets and mannequins clad in traditional clothes. As the information sheet explains, the 99 cupboards symbolise the 99 names of God.
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Kaymakamlar Müze Evi
This typical Safranbolu home has all the classic features of Ottoman houses. It was owned by a lieutenant colonel and still feels like an address of note as you climb the stairs towards the wooden ceiling decoration. Tableaux (featuring some rather weary mannequins) recreate scenes such as bathing in a cupboard and a wedding feast.
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Kars Culture & Art Association
Local historian Vedat's paint shop doubles as a small library and a museum about the Molokans ('milk-drinkers' in Russian) order, to which his grandmother belonged. The peaceful Christian group disagreed with the Russian Orthodox Church and came to Kars during the Russian occupation. Last century, rather than fight for the Ottomans, they scattered to the former USSR, USA and Canada.
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Karagöz Museum
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Ethnographic Museum
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Ethnographic Museum
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Chez Galip
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Rahmi M Koç Museum
Hasköy, located on the Beyoğlu side of the Golden Horn, was for centuries a small, predominantly Jewish, village. In the Ottoman period it also became home to a naval shipyard and a sultan’s hunting ground. Today, its main claim to fame is this splendid museum dedicated to the history of transport, industry and communications in Turkey. Founded by the head of the Koç industrial group, one of Turkey’s most prominent conglomerates, it exhibits artefacts from İstanbul’s industrial past. The collection is highly eclectic, giving the impression of being a grab-bag of cool stuff collected over the decades or donated to the museum by individuals, organisations or companies who…
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Museum of the Princes' Islands
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Aynalıkavak Kasrı
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