The İzmir Mask Museum, named for Necdet Alpar, was the second of Konak Municipality's boutique museums. It occupies a historic building put up in the Levantine manner and restored for the purpose, and it opened in the Alsancak quarter on 10 May 2011 as, in the municipality's words, the first mask museum in Türkiye.
The collection runs to more than three hundred pieces arranged in five categories: ritual masks, theatre masks, Anatolian masks, death masks, and a section for figures who left their mark. Mask workshops run here for children and young people as a way of letting them express themselves through art, and the museum's programmes are planned for every age group and run through the year as workshops, talks and visual presentations.
The museum also works beyond its own walls, producing interdisciplinary projects around academic teaching, research and institutional collaboration, and following fairs, biennials and congresses. Among its projects are the International Ethno-Culture Indonesia Congress, Living Masks, and an international workshop making mask sculpture from scrap metal. The address is Alsancak, 1448. Cumbalı Sk. No: 22, 35220 Konak.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İzmir as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 8.9 °C in January to 28 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (146 mm) and lightest in July (4 mm). Long-term means for 1938-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
