Guide
The museum stands on the old Cumhuriyet Meydanı in the Savurkapı quarter of Mardin. Its inscription has not survived, so exactly when it was built is not known, and the sources disagree about the architect: some name Mimarbaşı Lole and others Mimarbaşı Cebrail Hekimyan.
It was built toward the end of the nineteenth century, in the reign of Abdülhamid II, as a cavalry barracks for the Hamidiye regiments. After its use as a barracks it served from the early years of the Republic until 2003 as the military recruitment office and the tax office. The Sabancı Foundation began restoring it in 2007 and it opened in 2009 as the Sakıp Sabancı Mardin City Museum and the Dilek Sabancı Art Gallery.
The building has two floors. The ground floor was the stable of the barracks, and the upper floor held the administration and the dormitory. The single piece of decoration is at the entrance, set at the middle of the north front: a depressed-arched doorway within a shallow rectangular niche, with carved relief ornament inside the thick border framing the door and above it.
Upstairs the museum shows the crafts, living spaces, social life and finds and objects from the city's history that make up the identity and the memory of Mardin, with visual and audio material alongside; examples of every book published about Mardin to date can also be found there. The lower floor, the Dilek Sabancı Art Gallery, holds exhibitions of photography, painting, marbling and contemporary art.
