Diyarbakır's city museum is housed in the Cemil Paşa mansion in the Sur district, the home that the Ottoman governor Ahmet Cemil Paşa began building in the late 1880s.
The house spreads over some 2,000 square metres around a wide courtyard and has 42 rooms divided between the harem, where the family lived, and the selamlık, where guests were received. In the harem the north side served as winter quarters and the south side as summer quarters, with the east and west sides used by season. The selamlık held reception and coffee rooms, stables, rooms for the servants and an oval pool set in a rectangular frame. The mansion has two entrances and is built of dressed basalt.
The family lived here until 1927. After their exile in 1936 the mansion was turned into a school for pupils with trachoma, and later into a primary school and a workshop for silkworm breeding and weaving. It stood empty from the 1970s, was restored under the metropolitan municipality and the provincial administration, and opened in 2014 as a museum of the city's history and culture.
About 1,500 catalogued objects are spread through 18 sections, shown in kiosks and on panels. They cover beliefs, the peoples and cultures of Diyarbakır, food and cooking, water, education, music and folk dance, oral culture, language and writing, contemporary art, trade, farming and herding, and the growth of the city, along with a private collection from the Cemil Paşa family. Each piece carries a QR code that opens information about it.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Diyarbakır as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 1.8 °C in January to 31 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (70 mm) and lightest in August (1 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
Visiting hours
- Hours
- 08:30 - 19:00, closed Monday
