Istanbul Archaeological Museum

The İstanbul Archaeological Museums, a museum affiliated to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, is located in İstanbul's Sultanahmet neighborhood, on the Osman Hamdi Bey slope connecting the Gülhane Park with the Topkapı Palace. Its name is plural, since there are three different museums under the same administration: The Archaeological Museum, the Ancient Orient Museum (Eski Şark Eserleri Müzesi) and Tiled Kiosk Museum (Çinili Köşk Müzesi).

• During an İstanbul Archaeological Museums tour, it is possible to visit the extraordinarily beautiful garden of the museum and the three different buildings inside this garden.

• The İstanbul Archaeological Museums, which is housing various artifacts from civilizations that had left their traces to different periods of the history, is one of the 10 most important world-class museums designed and used as a museum building.

• Additionally, it is the first institution in Turkey arranged as a museum. Besides its spectacular collections, the architectural aspects of its buildings and its garden are of historical and natural importance.

• The İstanbul Archaeological Museums is welcoming all visitors who want to make a journey in the corridors of the history and to trace the remains of ancient civilizations.

The ornate Alexander Sarcophagus, once believed to be prepared for Alexander the Great, is among the most famous pieces of ancient art in the museum.[4] The Kadesh Peace Treaty (1258 BCE), signed between Ramesses II of Egypt and Hattusili III of the Hittite Empire, is a favourite of visitors. It is the oldest known peace treaty in the world, and a giant poster of this tablets containing the treaty is on the wall of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

The museum has a large collection of Turkish, Hellenistic and Roman artifacts. The most prominent artifacts exhibited in the museum include:

• The Alexander Sarcophagus, found in the necropolis of Sidon
• Sarcophagus of the Crying Women, also found in Sidon
• Sarcophagi of Tabnit and the Satrap
• A monumental Lycian tomb
• Glazed tile images from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon
• Statues from ancient antiquity until the end of the Roman Era, from Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Miletus
• Statue of an Ephebos
• Parts of statues from the Temple of Zeus found at Bergama
• Treaty of Kadesh
• A marble lion from the Mausoleum of Mausolus, one of the few pieces remaining in Turkey
• Snake's head from the Serpentine Column erected in the Hippodrome of Constantinople
• Mother-Goddess Cybele and votive stelai
• Busts of Alexander the Great and Zeus
• Fragments from the temple of Athena at Assos
• The Troy exhibit
• 800,000 Ottoman coins, seals, decorations and medals
• One of the three known tablets of the Treaty of Kadesh
• The Saba'a Stele of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III
• Tablet archive containing some 75,000 documents with cuneiform inscriptions
• Artifacts from the early civilizations of Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Arabia and Egypt
• Siloam inscription, which made headlines in July 2007 when Israel asked for its return

                                For more info please visit :  http://www.istanbularkeoloji.gov.tr

• Open: daily from 09.00 – 17.00, no entrance after 16.00
  Closed: Monday, and until 12.00 on the first day of religious holidays