Behind and below the Yeni Postane in Sirkeci is the post office's own museum, run by the İstanbul directorate of the PTT and divided into three: post, telegraph and telephone, and stamps.
The postal rooms start from 23 October 1840, when the service began, and show the tools of the trade along with the stages it passed through — postmen's bags and central bags, post boxes, maps of the postal routes, and the automatic franking machines still in use today. The telegraph and telephone section runs from the first telegraph line, strung between Edirne and Shumen on 9 September 1855, and the first telephone installation of 1881 between Soğukçeşme and the post office at the Yeni Cami, through Morse and Hughes instruments, electro-mechanical and electronic teleprinters, telephones of many kinds, manual and automatic exchanges, and handsets made in the PTT's own factories. The stamp rooms hold collections running from the Ottoman empire to the present.
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).
