Turist Rehberleri – Tourist Guides

Turkey’s Finest: The Top 10 Smaller Museums

There’s hardly a small town in Turkey that doesn’t have its own museum, and most of them follow a standard plan, with one section devoted to archeology, another to ethnography and a collection of miscellaneous bits and pieces outside in the grounds.

Unfortunately, many of these museums are tucked away in places where few visitors are likely to find them, while very few have adequate labeling in Turkish let alone in any other language. Leading the way to a brighter future are a handful of privately owned and run museums in İstanbul and elsewhere, but there are also some state-run museums which, while not quite up to the standards of their five-star counterparts, are still worth going out of your way to find. Last year, the introduction of the Müze Kart (Museum Card) suggested new enthusiasm for getting visitors through the doors — for just TL 20 the card offers admission to many of Turkey’s museums for a year. The snag? For the time being it’s only available to Turkish citizens, and not to foreigners, even those who have paid through the nose for residence permits, but must continue to cough up inflated “tourist” prices.

1. Sakıp Sabancı Museum, İstanbul: Looking out over the Bosporus from a beautifully landscaped hillside at Emirgan and with a prominent statue of a white horse on the lawn, the Sakıp Sabancı Museum is worth visiting as much for its location as for its contents, which feature a fine collection of Turkish calligraphy and many 19th and 20th century paintings, including works by Italian-born Ottoman court painter Fausto Zonaro and Turkish Orientalist artist Osman Hamdi Bey. The grounds contain an assortment of marble fountains and other masonry, some of it dating back to Roman and Byzantine times. Three of the ground-floor rooms retain the 18th and 19th century furnishings that were in use when this was a Sabancı family home. Open: 10 a.m-6 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday; 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday. Closed Mondays.

2. Sadberk Hanım Museum, İstanbul: If you can’t get to Ankara’s Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, you might want to stop by this cut-down version housed in a pair of wooden houses overlooking the Bosporus at Büyükdere. The older of the two buildings contains collections related to the history of Turkish and Islamic art, while the second houses archeological collections arranged in chronological order. In particular, look out for fine examples of the sort of Beykoz glass which used to be produced on the opposite side of the Bosporus. Three rooms have been set up to show off traditional circumcision and coffee-making ceremonies as well as what a lying-in room would have looked like in Ottoman times. Open: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed Wednesdays.

3. Uşak Museum: Why would you want to go to Uşak? Well, because it is home to the fabulous Kanun Treasure (also known as the treasure of Croesus), a superb collection of Lydian silver that finally wound up here in 1993 after a prolonged and illegal sojourn in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The silver comes from the ancient burial mounds which covered the remains of sixth century B.C. Lydian kings and includes some elegant bowls, a jug with the tiny figure of a naked acrobat forming the handle and some very Egyptian-looking jewelry. Just as wonderful are the remains of wall paintings depicting a young woman in a long scarf and red robe and a young man and woman facing each other, their long almond-shaped eyes harking back to Egyptian prototypes. In 2006, an outcry greeted the discovery that a fake had been substituted for a particularly lovely brooch in the shape of a winged seahorse. Last year, the director was one of a group of people convicted of stealing from the museum, a tragedy that might have been averted if more people came to visit it. Open: 8:30 a.m.-noon & 1:30 p.m.-5 p.m. Closed Mondays.

4. Bursa City Museum: A rare state-of-the-art museum that is not in İstanbul, the Bursa City Museum, housed in an old courthouse in the city center, displays mannequins of Ottoman sultans with headphone commentary explaining their role in Turkish history. The basement has intriguing reconstructions of old shops together with some grainy film showing felt-makers hard at work pounding wool in the humidity of the old hamams. The gift shop and a small café offer clues as to how the country’s museums might be made to pay for themselves in the future. Open: 9:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday to Friday, 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

5. Bergama Museum: Bergama’s is in many ways a typical provincial museum except that its location, in a hugely important historic town, ensures that its exhibits are more than usually impressive. In particular, there are several statues from a local school of sculpture that was heavily influenced by that of Afrodisias; the finest of all is a figure of Aphrodite that was dredged from the mud at nearby Allianoi, a spa resort dating back to antiquity that is currently threatened by Yortanlı Dam. Hopefully you will also be able to see the ethnography section, which houses a particularly rich collection of costumes and textiles but is only sporadically open. Open: 8:30 a.m.-noon & 1:30 p.m.-5 p.m. Closed Mondays.

6. Pamukkale Museum: Housed inside the old Roman baths of Hierapolis above the famous snow-white travertine, the Pamukkale Museum is a small gem that comes in three parts. The first displays some of the huge and finely carved sarcophagi retrieved from the sprawling necropolis, while the other two showcase small finds from Hierapolis as well as some of the lovely statues produced in nearby Afrodisias. Open: 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. & 1:30 p.m.-5 p.m. Closed Mondays.

7. Suna and İnan Kiraç Kaleiçi Museum: Hidden away in the heart of Kaleiçi, the old walled part of Antalya, this small private museum is partly housed inside a restored 19th century church and partly inside a restored Ottoman house. The church offers a light filled home to a collection of ceramics from Kütahya and Çanakkale, while the house shows off fairly predictable dioramas of the major events in Turkish lives: marriages, circumcisions and drinking coffee. The lovely black and white pebbled courtyards alone almost justify a visit. Open: 9 a.m.-noon & 1 p.m.-6 p.m. Closed Wednesdays.

8. Mardin Museum: Way out in the Southeast of Turkey, Mardin Museum is housed in one of the gorgeous honey-colored houses for which the town is renowned. It’s the building itself that is the real treasure here. However, some of the exhibits inside explain aspects of local culture that differ from elsewhere in Turkey, in particular the ceremony attached to the making and drinking of bitter mirra coffee. Open: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed Mondays.

9. İzmir Ethnography Museum: Housed inside a stately 19th century building that was once the St. Roche Hospital, this wonderful museum does its best to remind visitors of Turkey’s dying handicrafts, including felt-making, tinning, embroidery and manufacturing blue and white “evil eye” amulets. Another display also explains camel wrestling, a particularly Turkish sport that takes place along the Aegean coast in the winter. With time on your hands, you can also pop across to the Archeology Museum, which is housed nearby in a completely separate building. Open: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed Mondays.

10. Museum of Health, Edirne: Out in the water meadows that ring Edirne stands the II. Beyazıt mosque complex, which is worth visiting not just in its own right, but also for the chance to explore the Museum of Health that has been created inside the darüşşifa, the original medical center attached to the mosque. Just to prove that there’s nothing new under the sun, you’ll find out here that such seemingly new-fangled aspects of alternative medicine as music and aromatherapy actually have a history stretching all the way back to early Ottoman times. Open: 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Closed Mondays.

08 March 2009, Sunday

PAT YALE /TODAYS ZAMAN