Istanbul Archaeological Museums
Three-building museum complex below Topkapı Palace holding classical, ancient Near Eastern and Ottoman collections.
The Istanbul Archaeological Museums grew out of collections gathered in the Ottoman imperial armoury and were given a purpose-built home in 1891 under the painter and archaeologist Osman Hamdi Bey, the museum's first director. The neoclassical main building by Alexandre Vallaury was designed to echo the carved façades of the Sidon sarcophagi it was built to house, and was extended twice in the following decades. The complex stands in the first courtyard of Topkapı Palace, on the slope running down to Gülhane Park.
Three buildings make up the museum: the main Archaeological Museum, the Museum of the Ancient Orient in a former fine arts school, and the Tiled Kiosk of 1472, the oldest surviving secular Ottoman building in the city. Together they hold more than a million objects, from Mesopotamian and Anatolian material and the Treaty of Kadesh tablet to Greek and Roman sculpture, Byzantine finds from Istanbul itself and a large collection of İznik and Kütahya tiles.
Highlights
- Alexander Sarcophagus and other carved sarcophagi from the royal necropolis at Sidon
- Tiled Kiosk of 1472, the oldest secular Ottoman building in Istanbul
- Museum of the Ancient Orient, with the Treaty of Kadesh tablet
- Neoclassical 1891 main building by Alexandre Vallaury
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