İstanbul Archaeology Museums

Home to more than one million artefacts across the late Ottoman Empire.

The İstanbul Archaeology Museums, located on the grounds of Topkapı Palace and overlooks Gülhane Park, holds more than one million artefacts belonging to the civilisations within the borders of the late Ottoman Empire!

Inside this museum, its very own structure a testament to İstanbul's Neo-Classical architecture, you can find the Brankhit statues of the Didyma-Milet Sacred Road from the Archaic Age to the end of the Roman Age, the Kore and Kouros statues, the Lion Statue of the Halicarnassus Mausoleum, the Head of Aphrodite of the famous Pergamon Zeus Altar, Alexander the Great portrait, the sculpture works discovered in Aphrodisias, Ephesos and Miletos, the three great marble cities of the Roman period.

The museum is also home to numerous artefacts unearthed during excavations led by Osman Hamdi Bey, the founder of museology in Türkiye and the museum's first director in the 19th century. One of them is the world-famous Alexander Sarcophagus, unearthed in the Sidon King Necropolis during excavations conducted by Osman Hamdi Bey between 1887 and 1888.