The Mehmet Cabir Alper Archaeological Museum at Batman, also known as the Batman Museum, has three galleries -- Palaeolithic-Neolithic, Ilısu and Hasankeyf -- holding some 500 objects that run from the Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages. The arrangement follows the museum's own work: it directs seven rescue excavations at mounds in Batman and Siirt provinces lying in the Ilısu dam's flood area, and much of what is on display came out of them.
It is housed in the Batman culture centre building but has its own entrance, and it spreads over two floors covering some 1,500 square metres. The piece the museum names as its most important is a set of gaming stones found at Başur Höyük. Beside them stand the standing stone from Gusir Höyük, the bronze grave goods from Başur, and a figure of the god Bes from Hasankeyf.
The building carries the working side of the museum with it: a projection room in the gallery where documentaries about its excavations in the Batman and Siirt regions can be watched, a library of archaeology, culture and art history, and a laboratory where finds from the digs are conserved.
The garden holds the Museum Park, which the museum describes as the first project of its kind in Türkiye. Historical living spaces have been built there so that visitors learn by doing rather than by reading labels -- house models from the Gusir and Gre Amer mounds excavated for the Ilısu project, the burial customs found at Başur, Gre Amer and Kuriki, such as burying the dead within the house, replicas of the Başur gaming stones and of the Artuqid gate of Hasankeyf, a medieval living space from Hasankeyf, and examples of recent village life. There are also practice excavation areas where professional archaeologists show visitors, school groups of any age among them, how archaeological digging actually works.
Visiting hours
- Visiting hours
- 08:00 - 17:00, ticket desk closing at 16:30, closed Monday
When to go
- Climate
- Across Batman as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2.6 °C in January to 30.3 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in March (76 mm) and lightest in July (2 mm). Long-term means for 1952-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
