Guide
The museum at Akşehir is housed in Rüştü Bey Konağı, and the ministry's page is about the mansion rather than the collection — of what is displayed inside it, the page says almost nothing.
Rüştü Bey was the examining magistrate of Akşehir, and two buildings in the town carry his name: the Rüştü Bey Han of 1904, and this mansion, begun at the start of the First World War. He had his father Mustafa Ağa's house on the same plot demolished first. Armenian craftsmen began the work and Turkish craftsmen finished it.
The building was planned as a twin house of two storeys over a basement and ground floor, with a timber frame and walls of mudbrick and stone; Rüştü Bey lived in one half and his sons in the other. The ministry connects its form to the town itself: different ethnic groups have lived together in Akşehir through its history, and elements unlike those of the traditional Turkish house appear often in its architecture, this mansion among them.
It was registered by decision of the Ministry of Culture's high council dated 15 November 1985, numbered 1569, expropriated by the ministry in 1989, and repair began in 1992. Arranged afterwards as the Nasreddin Hoca Archaeology and Ethnography Museum, it has kept its original character. The ground floor has six rooms, given over to administrative use.
