The Beşiktaş Museum is a sports museum beneath Beşiktaş Park in the Vişnezade quarter of İstanbul, entered through the historic 19 Mayıs gate preserved during the building of the stadium. It stands within the BJK İnönü Stadium, opposite Dolmabahçe Palace, and can be reached easily by land and by sea.
It opened as a sports museum on 11 November 2001 with the support of members of the club's general assembly, and on 28 June 2007 it was given the status of the first private sports museum in Türkiye under the Ministry of Culture.
The stadium in which it stands opened on 27 November 1947. The first match played at the İnönü Stadium was between Beşiktaş JK and AIK, and the only goal of that match was scored by Süleyman Seba, then a player of note and later the club's honorary president, who served as club president for sixteen unbroken years. The stadium has been renovated at various times, but the Şeref Gate and the outer front looking over the Bosphorus have been kept in their original form. It has hosted not only Beşiktaş matches but many national and international fixtures, and it serves as a gathering place for celebrations on national holidays.
The museum has 1,650 square metres of display space and shows 420 historical documents and objects: the club's founding registration document, cups, shields and other awards, club badges from its beginnings to the present, historical photographs, and the original boots and shirts of well-known players. The cups Beşiktaş has won are displayed here, along with a sword given to the club by the former president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, a keen Beşiktaş supporter. In a further 370 square metres of storage, objects belonging to branches other than football have been classified and recorded.
The layout does the explaining, and it is worth walking it in order. The museum has its own entrance from the sea-facing 19 Mayıs gate of Beşiktaş Park and runs over two floors. Along the exhibition corridor stand thirty glass bays, each given to one important period, document or sportsman in the club's history, so that a visitor walking the corridor takes a quick tour through the history of Turkish sport. In the hall beside it chronology is still kept, but the cups and other objects are grouped freely by subject or period. More than fifty digital applications are placed through the rooms, designed for every age group. Photographs of the club's founders are at the entrance to the hall, and at its far end the portraits of every president from the first to the present hang together. The museum holds 650 cups in all.
Two things in the collection are worth looking for. One is a document of 5 May 1952 recording that Beşiktaş was the only club granted the right to represent the Turkish national football team with its full squad. The other is the representative presidential office of Süleyman Seba, the club's honorary president, with a statue of him displayed in a glass case. The exhibition area cost 35,000 euros to fit out at the opening, and in the 2008-2009 season 7,200 people came; the museum keeps close relations with local primary and secondary schools and is visited by pupils of every level on organised school trips.
Current entry prices are given on the club's own site.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İstanbul as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.8 °C in January to 24.7 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (99 mm) and lightest in July (22 mm). Long-term means for 1950-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
