The site has been military for more than a century. The Ayntab reserve depot was built beside the Alleben stream and served the Ottoman army until 1912; it was destroyed in the French bombardment. In the 1960s the ground carried the headquarters of a gendarmerie division, later a brigade, and until recently the Turkish Armed Forces still used it for non-commissioned officers' housing and a club. It passed to Gaziantep metropolitan municipality under a protocol with the Ministry of National Defence.
What the municipality built there is a panorama museum about the defence of Antep. The centrepiece is a full panoramic field 120 metres long and 13 metres high, with fourteen oil paintings and three dioramas around it.
Part of the collection was given rather than bought: dozens of objects came from the families of those killed or wounded in the fighting. Interactive areas run alongside the painted and modelled displays.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Gaziantep as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 3.2 °C in January to 28.1 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in January (103 mm) and lightest in August (5 mm). Long-term means for 1940-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
