Guide
The Ethnography Museum of Sinop occupies the Arslantorunlar mansion on Kemalettin Sami Caddesi, an example of Ottoman domestic architecture. The Ministry of Culture bought the house from the family's heirs, and after restoration by the Ankara directorate of survey and monuments it opened as a museum.
The building has three storeys: rubble stone in the foundations and ground floor, and a mixture of timber frame and brick above. The interior decoration shows the clear influence of the western Baroque and Rococo, and that influence combined with Ottoman woodcarving produces a manner of its own. The displays recreate the traditional life of Sinop and its region: gallery sections given to the houses of Sinop and Boyabat, a kitchen, and a village room, along with jewellery, swords and weaving looms used in the area. Four rooms and three iwans arranged symmetrically around a wide hall represent the life of an Ottoman mansion.
