Miniatürk is İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality's miniature park, built by its culture company Kültür A.S. and opened on 2 May 2003 on the Golden Horn at Sutluce. It holds 138 architectural works reproduced at 1:25 — 62 from İstanbul, 64 from the rest of Anatolia and 13 from the Ottoman lands now outside Türkiye — chosen for how well known they are and how well they represent their period.
The range is deliberately not limited to mosques and palaces. Caravanserais, mosque complexes, medreses, bridges, railway stations, piers, castles, city walls, tombs, mosques, churches, synagogues, palaces, waterside mansions, obelisks, monuments and statues sit alongside natural formations such as Pamukkale and the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia. Two of the models are of buildings that no longer exist: the Temple of Artemis and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, both built in Anatolia and both counted among the seven wonders of the ancient world.
There is an audio guide app — available in Turkish, English, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Persian, Japanese and Spanish — which also shows where in Türkiye each original stands, and there is municipal wifi along the route.
The site runs to 60,000 square metres, of which the models occupy 15,000. The rest holds a 300-space car park, a restaurant, a cafeteria, a gift shop, an open-air performance area and a children's playground, plus the Miniatek activity zone: a ferry, radio-controlled boats, a tour train, a story tree, games at the Mini Stadium, chess and maze areas, an upside-down house and a helicopter simulator over Türkiye and İstanbul.
The idea behind the choice of models is stated openly. Kültür A.Ş. describes the park as bringing together the architectural inheritance left by every civilisation that ruled and left a mark on these lands, from antiquity through Rome and Byzantium to the Seljuks and the Ottomans, and as reaching back three thousand years on the Golden Horn; the slogan it started out with was a small model of a great country. The works were selected by a specialist team, and the collection is not confined to Türkiye or to Turkish culture: it carries the traces of a whole lived past in the near geography, together with everything that made Anatolia what it is. The company calls Miniatürk not only a pleasant park but a project of culture and social responsibility, meant to let younger generations discover how deep-rooted the civilisation they were raised on is. The audio guide application can be downloaded to a phone from the App Store or Google Play, and it sets out the walking routes as well.
Visiting hours
- Visiting hours
- 10:00 - 18:00, closed Monday; from 26 June to 13 September open until 22:00 on Friday and Saturday, ticket office closing at 19:00 and the visit ending at 20:00
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).
