The Şahinbey National Struggle Museum tells the story of Antep's defence against British and French occupation — the resistance that earned the city the title 'Gazi'. It occupies a historic twelve-room building on Şehitler Caddesi at Ulucanlar Sokak, and, unusually, the caves beneath it.
The route is chronological. From the reception area visitors follow the exhibition rooms through the historic building, and then descend into the caves, which are where the museum does its most ambitious work: mechatronic figures staged in scenes of life at the time, multi-dimensional projection and sound effects, and reconstructions of what the caves were used for before the war — a soap workshop among them. Documents on the defence of Gaziantep are laid out in order in the building above, alongside British and French weapon parts and the things townspeople actually fought with: pistols, hunting guns, swords, daggers, cleavers, picks, shovels and hatchets, many of them belonging to those who died.
Buildings next to the museum hold its workshop, its library and meeting rooms. The last stretch of cave, running out to the street at the İhsan Bey Kasteli, is designed as temporary exhibition space.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Gaziantep as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 3.2 °C in January to 28.1 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in January (103 mm) and lightest in August (5 mm). Long-term means for 1940-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
