There is a museum inside İstanbul Airport, in the international departures area, and it opened in July 2020. Officials at the opening described it as the largest museum of its kind at any airport, ahead of those at San Francisco, Athens and Amsterdam.
Its subject is deliberately larger than the city it sits in. The minister of culture and tourism said the collection was assembled to cover not only İstanbul but the whole of Anatolia, bringing together work from every civilisation that lived there, from Göbeklitepe through to the republican period; 183 of the pieces shown belong to İstanbul. The reasoning given for building it was also stated plainly — a third of foreign visitors to Turkey enter through this airport, and the museum is aimed partly at the millions of transit passengers who pass through without leaving it.
The museum occupies a hall of about 1,000 square metres, and the plan announced at its opening was to show a different theme there each year. The first exhibition, in 2020, was titled 'Treasures of Türkiye – Faces of the Throne' and brought together 316 works from 29 museums, among them the personal belongings and portraits of kings and emperors and an Ottoman throne, displayed with modern technology. The governor of İstanbul said at the opening that a section had also been planned with young visitors in mind. The ministry put the audience it hoped to reach at the 15 million transit passengers a year who continue their journey without entering the country.
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).
Visiting hours
- Hours
- 08:30 - 19:00
