The monument on Sıhhiye Square was made in 1974, and it is a copy: the original is a religious ritual object 24 centimetres high, found in the excavations at Alacahöyük and now kept in the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism corrects a common attribution: although the figure is known as the symbol of the Hittites, it actually belongs to the Hatti, a people of the Early Bronze Age in the second half of the third millennium BC. The Hatti developed the cult of gods in animal form, and the bull above all became their most important symbol; the pairing of the bull with sky-and-sun discs suggests that the bull stood for the greatest sky god. The square is served by public transport.
Getting there
- Access
- Reached by public transport.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Ankara as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 0.4 °C in January to 23.6 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (52 mm) and lightest in August (13 mm). Long-term means for 1927-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
