The Natural Science Museum is the work of one collector. Ahmet Hamza began in 1990, taking animals that had died of natural causes — gathered from the wild or from zoos — and preparing them himself; by 2011 there was enough of it to open as a museum, which he says is the largest collection of its kind in İstanbul.
What is on show now is more than 600 taxidermied mammals and birds, together with over 1,000 butterflies and other invertebrates. The point of the arrangement is range rather than rarity: it lets you stand close to species you would otherwise only see at a distance, or not at all.
Visiting hours
- Visiting hours
- 09:30 - 15:30
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).
