The kilim museum is underneath the Sultan Ahmed mosque — literally. It occupies the vaulted basement built under the mosque's qibla wall on the south front, a structure that also serves as a retaining wall, next to the south-west minaret; the way in is through the garden on the south side of the mosque and then a plain door, and the long arched gallery inside takes its air and light through slit windows. The space was built between 1609 and 1617 for Sultan Ahmed I by the architect Sedefkâr Mehmet Ağa, and in its early years it is known to have been used as a store.
It has been run by the directorate general of foundations as a museum of kilims and flatweaves since 1982, with some five hundred pieces of museum quality on its inventory: kilims and flatweaves particular to various regions of Anatolia, Ottoman palace kilims and tent kilims, and examples of the traditional zili, cicim and sumak techniques.
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).
