🇹🇷Türkiye

Hagia Irene

Aya İrini Kilisesi

Hagia Irene is the Byzantine church that was never made into a mosque, and it is the reason it still looks like a Byzantine church inside.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Rumeli Hisarı

Rumeli Hisarı is a fortress built to close a strait, and everything about it follows from that one job.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Beylerbeyi Palace

Beylerbeyi Sarayı

Beylerbeyi Palace is the Ottoman court's summer address on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, built for Sultan Abdulaziz between 1861 and 1865 by the architect Sarkis Balyan, with Hagop Balyan named alongside him.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

The Museum of Innocence

Masumiyet Müzesi

A novel and a building made in parallel, and neither is quite the illustration of the other.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum

Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi

The Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum is housed in the Ibrahim Pasha Palace, a stone mansion of 1524 that belonged to Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha, the second grand vizier of Suleiman the Magnificent.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Palace of the Porphyrogenitus

Tekfur Sarayı is the last Byzantine palace in Istanbul still standing to its full height, and it survives because it was never important enough to be worth demolishing.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

İstanbul Modern

İstanbul Modern Sanat Müzesi

Istanbul Modern opened on 11 December 2004 as Turkey's first museum of modern and contemporary art, installed in Entrepo No. 4, a customs warehouse from the 1950s standing on the Karaköy quay.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Pera Museum

Pera Müzesi

Pera Museum is a private art museum on the Beyoğlu ridge, established on 8 June 2005 by the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation. Its building was not built as a museum.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Miniatürk

Miniatürk Açıkhava Müzesi

Miniatürk opened on 2 May 2003 on the northeastern shore of the Golden Horn, and the idea behind it is straightforward: shrink the architecture of Turkey and the former Ottoman world to one twenty-fifth of full size and lay it…

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Theodosius Cistern

Şerefiye Sarnıcı

Şerefiye Sarnıcı is a Roman water tank that spent most of the last three centuries with a building sitting on top of it.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Küçüksu Pavillion

Küçüksu Kasrı

Kucuksu is a kasir and not a saray, and the whole visit turns on that distinction.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Tiled Kiosk

Çinili Köşk

The Tiled Kiosk, Çinili Köşk, is the oldest non-religious Ottoman building in Istanbul and the odd one out among the city's Ottoman monuments: it does not look Ottoman.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Great Palace Mosaic Museum

Büyük Saray Mozaikleri Müzesi

Beneath the Arasta Bazaar, the row of shops behind the Blue Mosque, lies a strip of floor that belonged to the Great Palace of Constantinople.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Cistern of Philoxenos

Binbirdirek Sarnıcı

Turks call it Binbirdirek, "a thousand and one columns", which is a way of saying "a great many" rather than a count. The real figure is 224.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Istanbul Naval Museum

Deniz Müzesi

The Istanbul Naval Museum was founded in 1897 by Bozcaadali Hasan Husnu Pasha, then Ottoman Minister of the Navy, which makes it the first military museum established in Turkey.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Sakıp Sabancı Museum

Sabancı Üniversitesi Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi

This is a museum that used to be somebody's house, and the house has an unusually crowded guest list. From 1848 to 1884 the Emirgan mansion passed through a succession of high-ranking pasha families and Egyptian khedives.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Jewish Museum of Turkey

500. Yıl Vakfı Türk Musevileri Müzesi

The Quincentennial Foundation Museum of Turkish Jews tells the story of a community that has been in this city far longer than most of the monuments around it.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Ihlamur Palace

Ihlamur Kasrı (Merasim Köşkü)

Ihlamur is not a palace in the sense that Dolmabahçe is a palace.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Rahmi M. Koç Museum

Rahmi M. Koç Müzesi

Istanbul's museum of industry, transport and communication sits on the northern shore of the Golden Horn at Hasköy, well upstream of the tourist city and reached by water more pleasantly than by road.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Istanbul Aviation Museum

İstanbul Havacılık Müzesi

The Istanbul Aviation Museum is operated by the Turkish Air Force Academy in Yeşilköy, on the grounds of Istanbul's former main airport, and covers the history of Turkish military and civil aviation from the Ottoman era onward.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Galatasaray Museum

Galatasaray Müzesi

Galatasaray Museum is the official museum of Galatasaray Sports Club, one of Turkey's most prominent multi-sport organizations. Located in Istanbul, the institution preserves and displays materials related to the club's extensive history across football, basketball, and other athletic disciplines.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Atatürk Museum

Atatürk Museum, Şişli

This is a rented house on a busy Şişli avenue that happens to be where the Turkish Republic was decided upon. The building is a three-storey house put up in 1908.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Museum of Anatolian Civilizations

Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi

The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is Ankara’s principal archaeological museum, presenting the cultures that shaped Anatolia through settlement, craft, belief and political change. It occupies the Ottoman-period Mahmutpaşa Bedesten and Kurşunlu Han in historic Ulus, beside Ankara Castle.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

Museum of the Ancient Orient

Eski Şark Eserleri Müzesi

The Museum of the Ancient Orient, known locally as Eski Şark Eserleri Müzesi, is an archaeological museum in Istanbul. It forms part of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums complex.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Ethnography Museum of Ankara

Etnografya Müzesi

The Ethnography Museum of Ankara is an indoor museum devoted to Turkish cultural heritage and material culture. Its displays connect domestic life, religious practice, clothing, textiles and decorative arts through objects, workmanship and local traditions.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

Istanbul Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam

İslam bilim ve teknoloji tarihi müzesi

The museum occupies the Has Ahırlar, the former imperial stables, a long low range on the edge of Gülhane Park below the Topkapı walls, and it opened on 25 May 2008 under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

Ankara Painting and Sculpture Museum

Ankara Resim ve Heykel Müzesi

Ankara Painting and Sculpture Museum is a national fine-arts museum in Ankara’s historic Altındağ area, at Hacettepe Mahallesi, Türk Ocağı Sokak No:1.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

Ephesus Archaeological Museum

Selçuk Efes Müzesi

Ephesus Archaeological Museum is the principal museum for understanding ancient Ephesus in Selçuk, İzmir. It presents finds from worship, daily life, art and power, giving objects a closer scale than the open-air ruins.

• Must see
• Museum
• İzmir

İzmir Archaeological Museum

Izmir Archaeology Museum

İzmir Archaeological Museum is a city museum in Konak, located inside Bahribaba Park at Yeşiltepe Mahallesi, Halil Rıfat Paşa Caddesi No: 4. The present museum building opened to visitors on 11 February 1984 and was built on a 5,000-square-metre site.

• Must see
• Museum
• İzmir

Manisa Museum

Manisa Müzesi

The Manisa Museum is the archaeological and ethnographic collection of the province, and as of 17 May 2025 it no longer stands where earlier guides to Manisa describe it.

• Must see
• Museum
• Manisa

Churches of Göreme

Göreme Açık Hava Müzesi

Churches of Göreme is the rock-cut monastic heart of the Göreme Open-Air Museum in Cappadocia. Chapels, monasteries and decorated cave interiors are carved into soft volcanic tuff, creating a religious landscape rather than a single monumental building.

• Must see
• Museum
• Nevşehir

Agora of Smyrna

Agora Açık Hava Müzesi

The Agora of Smyrna is the excavated state agora of ancient Smyrna in central İzmir, in Namazgah near Mezarlıkbaşı.

• Must see
• Museum
• İzmir

Ankara Palas

Ankara Palas is a historic building in Ulus that now operates as Ankara Palas Museum. It stands opposite the Second Assembly building and connects architecture with the political and social history of early Republican Ankara.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

USS Tang

TCG Pirireis

USS Tang is the submarine displayed in İzmir as TCG PİRİREİS, a museum vessel at the İzmir Naval Museum’s İnciraltı quay.

• Must see
• Museum
• İzmir

İzmir Ethnography Museum

İzmir Etnografya Müzesi

İzmir Ethnography Museum occupies a historic three-storey building in Konak, on Halil Rıfat Paşa Caddesi beside the Varyant route. The building was constructed in 1831 as St.

• Must see
• Museum
• İzmir

Ulucanlar Prison Museum

Ulucanlar Cezaevi Müzesi

Ulucanlar Prison Museum occupies Ankara’s former Ulucanlar Prison, built in 1925 as the first prison of the Republic of Türkiye.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

İnciraltı Sea Museum

İzmir Müze Gemiler Müdürlüğü

İnciraltı Sea Museum is a waterfront collection of former naval vessels at İnciraltı pier in Balçova, İzmir.

• Must see
• Museum
• İzmir

Gökyay Association Chess Museum

Gökyay Vakfı Satranç Müzesi

Gökyay Association Chess Museum is a specialist Ankara museum built around Akın Gökyay’s chess-set collection, which he began in 1975. It presents chess through design, craftsmanship, history, symbolism, and cultural exchange, rather than only as a competitive game.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

Republic Museum

Cumhuriyet Müzesi

Republic Museum is housed in Ankara’s former 2nd Grand National Assembly building in Ulus, where parliament met from 1924 to 1960.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

Türkiye İş Bankası Economic Independence Museum

Türkiye İş Bankası İktisadi Bağımsızlık Müzesi

Türkiye İş Bankası Economic Independence Museum is a museum in Ankara’s Ulus district at Çam Sokak No: 3. It presents the history of Türkiye İş Bankası alongside Türkiye’s economic development and the broader story of economic independence.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

Akhisar Museum

Akhisar Müzesi

Akhisar Museum, in the Paşa neighbourhood of Akhisar district, opened on 6 August 2012 in a building with a longer history than the museum itself: built in 1932 as the Ali Şefik Hospital, endowed by Ayşe Aloğlu, it later became…

• Must see
• Museum
• Manisa

Stamp Museum

PTT Pul Müzesi

Stamp Museum is the PTT museum in Ankara’s historic Ulus district, housed in the restored Emlak ve Eytam Bank building.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

War of Independence Museum

Kurtuluş Savaşı Müzesi

The War of Independence Museum occupies the building of the First Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara’s Ulus Square. This is the historic building where the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi first met during the War of Independence.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

Arkas Art Center

Arkas Art Center is a temporary-exhibition venue in İzmir’s Alsancak district, housed in a restored historic building whose rooms shape the visit.

• Must see
• Museum
• İzmir

Gordion Museum

Gordion Müzesi

Gordion Museum stands beside Yassıhöyük, the village associated with the ancient Phrygian capital of Gordion in Ankara Province. Established in 1963, it presents archaeological finds from the settlement and helps visitors understand the site’s long occupation.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

Pembe Köşk

Pembe Köşk is the historic Ankara house where İsmet İnönü lived with his family from 1925 to 1973.

• Must see
• Museum
• Ankara

Galata Mevlevihanesi

Galata Mevlevihanesi Müzesi

The Galata Mevlevihanesi is the oldest Mevlevi dervish lodge in Istanbul, established in 1491 during the reign of Bayezid II on land that had belonged to İskender Pasha, a prominent governor of the period.

• Must see
• Museum
• Istanbul

İzmir Women's Museum

İzmir Kadın Müzesi

İzmir Women's Museum is a Konak Municipality museum in Basmane, opened on 23 January 2014 and identified by İzmir's public bodies as Turkey's first women's museum.

• Must see
• Museum
• İzmir

Bergama Museum

İzmir Bergama Müzesi

Bergama Museum is an indoor museum in Bergama, İzmir, bringing together archaeology from the ancient city’s major excavation areas and objects from the region’s traditional life.

• High
• Museum
• İzmir

İzmir Atatürk Museum

Atatürk Müzesi

İzmir Atatürk Museum is a house museum on Atatürk Caddesi, the First Kordon waterfront road in Alsancak.

• High
• Museum
• İzmir

USS Ainsworth

TCG Ege

USS Ainsworth is preserved as TCG EGE at İzmir Naval Museum, where the former warship is displayed as a museum ship at İnciraltı pier.

• High
• Museum
• İzmir

Hittite Sun Course Monument

Hitit Güneş Kursu Anıtı

Hittite Sun Course Monument is a large public sculpture in Sıhhiye Lozan Square, central Ankara.

• High
• Art and culture venue
• Ankara

METU Science and Technology Museum

ODTÜ Bilim ve Teknoloji Müzesi

METU Science and Technology Museum occupies a university setting on the Middle East Technical University campus in Ankara and brings together three distinct exhibition areas: the Science and Technology History Exhibition, the Classical Automobile Exhibition and the Open-Air Exhibition.

• High
• Museum
• Ankara

İzmir Toy Museum

Ümran Baradan Oyun ve Oyuncak Müzesi

İzmir Toy Museum is a specialised Konak Municipality collection in Varyant, built around toys gathered by ceramic artist and painter Ümran Baradan.

• High
• Museum
• İzmir

Feza Gürsey Science Center

Feza Gürsey Bilim Merkezi

Feza Gürsey Science Center is an interactive science venue inside Ankara’s Altınpark. Ankara Metropolitan Municipality founded the center on 23 April 1993 to make scientific ideas accessible through hands-on discovery.

• High
• Museum
• Ankara

Muğla Museum

Muğla Müzesi

Muğla Museum occupies a former prison building on Müştak Bey Cad., behind the courthouse in Menteşe.

• High
• Museum
• Muğla

Opera Stage

Ankara Devlet Opera ve Balesi

Opera Stage is a working performance venue at Atatürk Bulvarı No:20 in Ankara’s Ulus district. Ankara State Opera and Ballet operates it, while the building is also used with the State Theatres.

• High
• Art and culture venue
• Ankara

Çakırağa Mansion

Çakırağa Konağı

Çakırağa Mansion is a preserved historic residence in Birgi Mahallesi, near Ödemiş in İzmir Province, now experienced as a Ministry of Culture and Tourism museum.

• High
• Museum
• İzmir

Milas Museum

Milas Müzesi

Milas Museum is a local museum in Milas, Muğla, founded in 1987 and devoted to the archaeological and ethnographic heritage of the surrounding region.

• High
• Museum
• Muğla

Nevşehir Museum

Nevşehir Müzesi

Nevşehir Museum is a Ministry of Culture and Tourism museum whose story began in 1967, when it opened as the Damat İbrahim Paşa Archaeology and Ethnography Museum.

• High
• Museum
• Nevşehir

Çeşme Museum

Çeşme Müzesi

Çeşme Museum is an archaeological museum inside historic Çeşme Castle in Musalla Mahallesi. The castle is part of the visit, giving the collection a setting of defensive walls and historic rooms rather than a detached modern gallery.

• High
• Museum
• İzmir

Ankara Vakıf Museum

Ankara Vakıf Eserleri Müzesi

Ankara Vakıf Museum is a specialised Ulus collection centred on objects preserved through the charitable foundation tradition known as vakıf. Its displays connect religious practice with the material skills that supported worship, learning and public benefit.

• High
• Museum
• Ankara

Bilkent Concert Hall

Bilkent Senfoni Orkestrası (BSO) Konser Salonu

Bilkent Concert Hall is a 700-seat performance venue in Bilkent University’s Faculty of Music and Performing Arts and the home stage of the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra.

• High
• Art and culture venue
• Ankara

The Atatürk and War of Independence Museum

Atatürk ve Kurtuluş Savaşı Müzesi

The Atatürk and War of Independence Museum is a museum within Anıtkabir, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s memorial complex in Anıttepe, Ankara.

• High
• Museum
• Ankara

Human Rights Monument

İnsan Hakları

The Human Rights Monument is a bronze civic sculpture at the junction of Yüksel Street and Konur Street in Kızılay, central Ankara. Sculptor Metin Yurdanur made it, and it was installed in 1990.

• High
• Art and culture venue
• Ankara

Tree of Science

Bilim Ağacı

Tree of Science, called Bilim Ağacı in Turkish, is an outdoor monument at the A1 entrance of Middle East Technical University in Ankara.

• High
• Art and culture venue
• Ankara

Şinasi Stage

Şinasi Sahnesi

Şinasi Stage is a State Theatres venue in Ankara operated by the General Directorate of State Theatres under Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Its auditorium opened on 13 March 1988 and contains 490 seats.

• High
• Art and culture venue
• Ankara

İzmir Museum of History and Art

İzmir Tarih ve Sanat Müzesi

Inside İzmir’s Kültürpark at the Montrö Gate in Alsancak, the İzmir Museum of History and Art presents the archaeological and artistic record of İzmir, ancient Smyrna and the wider Aegean setting.

• High
• Museum
• İzmir

Ziraat Bank Museum

Ziraat Bankası Müzesi

Ziraat Bank Museum is a compact institutional museum about the history of Turkey’s state banking tradition. It opened in 1981 in the Honor Hall of Ziraat Bank’s Ankara headquarters, presenting the story within the institution’s own historic home.

• High
• Museum
• Ankara

Main Building of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums

İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzesi

This is the main building of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, the oldest purpose-built museum in Turkey and the one the whole complex is named after.

• High
• Museum
• Istanbul

Mehmet Akif Ersoy Museum House

Mehmet Akif Ersoy Evi ve Müzesi

Mehmet Akif Ersoy Museum House is a two-storey wooden Ankara house beside Taceddin Dergâhı in Hamamönü.

• High
• Museum
• Ankara

Alagöz Karargâh Museum

Alagöz Karargah Müzesi

Alagöz Karargâh Museum is a preserved village headquarters associated with the Battle of Sakarya in 1921.

• High
• Museum
• Ankara

Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology

Bodrum Sualtı Arkeoloji Müzesi

Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology occupies rooms and courtyards inside Bodrum Castle, the historic fortress between the town’s two harbours. Operating since 1964, it is Türkiye’s only museum devoted to underwater archaeology.

• High
• Museum
• Muğla

Cin Ali Museum

Cin Ali Müzesi

Cin Ali Museum is a specialised children’s literature and literacy museum in Ankara’s Kavaklıdere, at Bülten Sokak No. 32. Its subject is Cin Ali, the reading character created by teacher Rasim Kaygusuz in 1968 and drawn by Selçuk Seğmen.

• High
• Museum
• Ankara

Fethiye Museum

Fethiye Müzesi

Fethiye Museum is a town-centre museum in Kesikkapı presenting archaeology and ethnography from Fethiye and its surrounding area. Its collection connects local life with the ancient landscapes of Lycia.

• High
• Museum
• Muğla

Key Museum

Key Museum is a dedicated motoring museum near Torbalı in İzmir, built around historic automobiles, motorcycles, and an extensive collection of scale models.

• High
• Museum
• İzmir

Zeki Müren Museum

Zeki Müren Sanat Müzesi

Zeki Müren Museum occupies the Bodrum house where the celebrated Turkish singer and stage performer lived from 1980 until his death in 1996.

• High
• Museum
• Muğla

Akün Stage

Akün Sahnesi

Akün Stage is an Ankara State Theatre venue in Çankaya, beside Kuğulu Park on Atatürk Boulevard. It opened on 12 January 2003 after Akün Cinema was converted into a theatre venue.

• High
• Art and culture venue
• Ankara

Marshal Atatürk Monument

Mareşal Atatürk Anıtı

Marshal Atatürk Monument is a bronze civic memorial in Zafer Meydanı, on Atatürk Bulvarı in central Ankara. Italian sculptor Pietro Canonica created it, and it opened on 4 November 1927.

• High
• Art and culture venue
• Ankara

Altınköy Açık Hava Müzesi

Altınköy Açık Hava Müzesi is a reconstructed Anatolian village landscape in Beşikkaya, Altındağ, dedicated to rural life in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

• Notable
• Museum
• Ankara

CerModern

CerModern is a contemporary arts centre in Ankara’s Sıhhiye district, bringing exhibition halls, the Flow digital exhibition, a shop, CafeModern and a library into one venue.

• Notable
• Museum
• Ankara

Manisa Mevlevi Lodge Museum

Manisa Mevevihane Müzesi

The Manisa Mevlevihane is a Mevlevi dervish lodge built in 1368-69 by İshak Çelebi, grandson of the Saruhanoğlu ruler Saruhan Bey, on a slope at the foot of Spil Mountain.

• Notable
• Museum
• Manisa

Kadıköy Haldun Taner Stage

Haldun Taner Sahnesi

• Must see
• Art and culture venue
• Istanbul