The museum began as the Harput Museum, founded on 30 April 1965 in the Alacalı Mescit in the Harput quarter. To display and protect the pre-Christian material coming out of the surveys and excavations run under the Keban and Karakaya dam projects, a new building was begun in 1971 inside the engineering faculty campus of Fırat University, and it opened as the Elazığ Archaeology and Ethnography Museum on 28 July 1982.
The building has three parts: a hall for archaeological objects and coins, a carpet and kilim gallery, and an ethnography hall.
The ministry gives the collection in figures. The inventory holds 31,435 registered objects — 15,238 archaeological, 5,310 ethnographic and 10,887 coins. What is actually on display is a small part of that: 1,071 archaeological objects, 602 ethnographic ones and 493 coins.
The museum's area of responsibility extends beyond its walls: 288 registered cultural properties requiring protection fall under it. The address is Üniversite Mahallesi, Elazığ.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Elazığ as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -0.7 °C in January to 27.2 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June and September; rainfall is heaviest in April (63 mm) and lightest in August (2 mm). Long-term means for 1938-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
