This award-winning museum (European Museum of the Year, 1997) features various artifacts that were left behind by the empires that ruled the Anatolian plain from the Paleolithic era until about 700 BC. There is a great collection of Paleolithic, Neolithic, Hatti, Hittite, Phrygian, Urartian and Roman artifacts found here, where the emphasis is on quality, not quantity. The plan of the musuem is simple. The rooms are laid out chronologically. It gives a very interesting taste for how civilizations progressed through the ages. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff our guidebook told us to make sure to see was already on loan on exhibitions.

The museum itself didn’t turn out to be that easy to get to. We took the subway to the nearest stop, and were then faced with about an hour hike up a hill to the museum. We chickened out and grabbed a cab. Well worth the $3!

It didn’t take us long to be all artifact’ed out. So we headed out to go shopping.