Guide
The Antalya Toy Museum occupies an old inn, given a new use as a museum, at the historic marina in Kaleiçi. Its collection holds some three thousand toys spanning the period from the 1860s to the 1990s.
Work towards the museum was begun in September 2010 by the culture and social affairs department of the Antalya metropolitan municipality, carried out with the advice of Sunay Akın, founder of the İstanbul Toy Museum. The museum opened with a ceremony on 23 April 2011. New toys were added to the collection in July of that year, and workshops for children began in September.
The building holds eleven halls and an amphitheatre seating five hundred.
Among the collection are figures of Nasreddin Hoca and his donkey, the Smurfs, Cinderella and her pumpkin coach, the Daltons, Lucky Luke, Mickey Mouse, Popeye and Keloğlan. There are also examples of the toys made by the first factories that appeared after the industrial revolution, along with pieces marking the history of the toy and some of the rarest doll's houses.
A range of activities is run at the museum: painting wooden toys, mask making, origami and kirigami, jigsaws, modelling in clay, sand painting, art workshops, and workshops in drama and acting.
In 2021 the museum received an award in the category of museums of living culture in the museum competition held by the union of historic towns, for the variety it brings to tourism in the city and for what its teaching work, carried out with a university, contributes to the culture of the place.
