Twelve museums in five parts of the city, and the day each one closes.
After Topkapı Palace, the best museums in Istanbul are the Istanbul Archaeological Museums and the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in the old city, Istanbul Modern and the Pera Museum in Beyoğlu, the Rahmi M. Koç Museum on the Golden Horn and the Sakıp Sabancı Museum up the Bosphorus. Pick them by area, and two or three fit in a day.
Topkapı deserves a day of its own, and Hagia Sophia has been a mosque again since 2020; both are in our guide to Istanbul’s landmarks.
Going on a Monday? Only three open: the Archaeological Museums, Turkish and Islamic Arts, and santralistanbul’s Energy Museum.
Two museums a short walk from Topkapı.
Sultanahmet (Gülhane)
Three buildings in Topkapı’s outer gardens: Alexandre Vallaury’s main museum of 1891, the first building in Türkiye designed as a museum, the Museum of the Ancient Orient and the Tiled Kiosk of 1472. The royal sarcophagi from Sidon draw most visitors, and the finds run from the Hittites to Byzantium.
Open every day Open: every day, 9 am to 6:30 pm; the ticket office closes at 5:30 pm. Official website
Sultanahmet
The palace Süleyman the Magnificent gave his grand vizier İbrahim Pasha, on the Hippodrome, holds Seljuk and early Ottoman carpets whose patterns carpet shops still copy. Calligraphy and Qur’an manuscripts fill the rest, across the square from the Blue Mosque in Sultanahmet.
Open every day Open: every day, 9 am to 6:30 pm; the ticket office closes at 5:30 pm. Official website
From the Karaköy shore up to Pera: walk them uphill, lunch halfway.
Karaköy
Türkiye’s first museum of modern and contemporary art opened in 2004 in a customs warehouse on the Karaköy shore. Since May 2023 it fills Renzo Piano’s new building on the same spot, with a café over the Bosphorus.
Closed Mondays Open: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm, and until 8 pm on Fridays; closed on Mondays. Official website
Tophane
Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University’s own museum in Tophane holds Turkish painting and sculpture from the late Ottoman academy to the end of the twentieth century. The university runs it, so the MuseumPass does not cover it; these are its fees.
| Ticket | Price (TRY) |
|---|---|
| Visitors from abroad | 550 |
| Turkish citizens | 200 |
| Students over 18 | 100 |
Closed Mondays Open: 10 am to 5 pm, and until 8 pm on Tuesdays; closed on Mondays. Official website
Beyoğlu (Tepebaşı)
The old Hôtel Bristol of 1893 in Pera opened as the Pera Museum in 2005, with Orientalist painting, Anatolian weights and measures, and Kütahya tiles, a good primer on the Turkish arts you will meet in shops. Osman Hamdi Bey’s The Tortoise Trainer hangs here.
Closed Mondays Open: Tuesday to Saturday 10 am to 7 pm, Fridays until 10 pm, Sundays noon to 6 pm; closed on Mondays. Official website
Çukurcuma
Orhan Pamuk wrote The Museum of Innocence and opened this house in Çukurcuma in 2012: cabinet after cabinet of the objects in Kemal and Füsun’s story, including 4,213 cigarette ends.
Closed Mondays Open: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm, last entry 5:30 pm; closed on Mondays. Official website
Three museums of the city’s industry, good for families and rainy days.
Hasköy, Golden Horn
An Ottoman anchor foundry and the 1861 shipyard at Hasköy hold cars, steam engines, aircraft, boats and a Second World War submarine moored on the water. The industrialist Rahmi M. Koç opened it in 1994; give it two hours.
Closed Mondays Open: Tuesday to Friday 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, weekends until 6 pm; closed on Mondays. Official website
Sütlüce, Golden Horn
An open-air park of 135 scale models on the shore at Sütlüce, most at one twenty-fifth size: Hagia Sophia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and buildings from across the old Ottoman lands.
Closed Mondays Open: 10 am to 6 pm every day except Monday. Official website
Silahtarağa, Golden Horn
The Silahtarağa power station at the top of the Golden Horn lit Istanbul until 1983, and its turbines and control room stand intact on the campus of Istanbul Bilgi University. The Energy Museum inside is free.
Open every day Open: every day, 8:30 am to 5 pm, and free for everyone. Official website
Two on the European shore, a taxi apart, and one across the water.
Beşiktaş
On the Beşiktaş waterfront, a short walk from Dolmabahçe, in a building opened in 2013. The imperial caïques, the long rowing barges that carried sultans along the Bosphorus, are its best-known pieces.
Closed Mondays Open: weekdays 9 am to 5 pm, weekends 10 am to 6 pm; closed on Mondays. Official website
Emirgan
A hillside mansion at Emirgan, bought by the Sabancı family in 1951 and a museum since 2002, with a garden down to the water. Its exhibitions have brought Picasso, Rodin, Dalí and Anish Kapoor.
Closed Mondays Open: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm, free on Tuesdays; closed on Mondays. Official website
Göztepe, Asian side
A wooden house in Göztepe that the poet Sunay Akın opened in 2005, filled with dolls, trains and cars up to two centuries old. Take the ferry across; our page on Kadıköy covers the rest of the day.
Closed Mondays Open: 10 am to 6 pm on weekdays and until 6:30 pm at weekends; closed on Mondays. Official website
Most private museums close on Mondays; the big state museums do not. Hours change on public holidays, so look again the week you go.
| Museum | Area | Closed |
|---|---|---|
| Istanbul Archaeological Museums | Sultanahmet (Gülhane) | Open every day |
| Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts | Sultanahmet | Open every day |
| Istanbul Modern | Karaköy | Monday |
| Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture | Tophane | Monday |
| Pera Museum | Beyoğlu (Tepebaşı) | Monday |
| Museum of Innocence | Çukurcuma | Monday |
| Rahmi M. Koç Museum | Hasköy, Golden Horn | Monday |
| Miniatürk | Sütlüce, Golden Horn | Monday |
| santralistanbul Energy Museum | Silahtarağa, Golden Horn | Open every day |
| Istanbul Naval Museum | Beşiktaş | Monday |
| Sakıp Sabancı Museum | Emirgan | Monday |
| Istanbul Toy Museum | Göztepe, Asian side | Monday |
State museums sell one ticket each at the door. MuseumPass Istanbul is a five-day card for 13 museums run by the Ministry of Culture; private museums sell their own tickets. Our list of entrance fees in Istanbul carries this year’s prices for the big sights. The Istanbul Insider has two more:
The Istanbul Archaeological Museums, beside Topkapı Palace.
Istanbul Modern, the Pera Museum and the Sakıp Sabancı Museum.
The Rahmi M. Koç Museum, Miniatürk and the Istanbul Toy Museum.
The Golden Horn three, or Sultanahmet’s two.
Carpets at Turkish and Islamic Arts, tiles at Pera.
santralistanbul’s Energy Museum daily; the Sakıp Sabancı Museum on Tuesdays.
Museums came late to Istanbul. The Ottoman court kept old weapons and antiquities in the Byzantine church of Hagia Irene, inside the palace walls, and only in 1869 did they become a museum in the public sense: the Imperial Museum, the first in the empire.
The man who turned that storeroom into a museum was Osman Hamdi Bey: painter, archaeologist and, from 1881 until his death in 1910, its first Turkish director. Under him the empire banned the export of antiquities, he dug the royal tombs at Sidon himself in 1887, and the Archaeological Museums were built to hold what he found.
The digs go on: five excavation sites rewriting Istanbul’s history.
Who is coming, which museums you hope to see, and anyone who sets the pace.
We reply within a day with a route and the licensed guide we would send.
There is no deposit until you are happy with the plan.
Your guide meets you where you are staying, and the day is yours.
Ask for either by name when you write.
Prehistory
She dug at the Tepecik-Çiftlik excavations in Niğde as a student, and guides through the museums of Sultanahmet.
She studied prehistory at Istanbul University.
Classical archaeology
She worked as an archaeologist on the Marmaray dig beneath the Bosphorus, after interning at the Rahmi Koç Museum.
A licensed Istanbul guide since 2011, with an MA in Art History.
Licensed guides, TÜRSAB member #7651
Guiding Istanbul since 2011
145 Google reviews rated 5.0560 TripAdvisor reviews rated 4.8More than museums: our best Istanbul city tours, alternative Istanbul tours and longer Türkiye tours.
The Istanbul Archaeological Museums, beside Topkapı Palace in Sultanahmet. Opened in 1891, the museum holds the royal sarcophagi from Sidon. For art in Istanbul, see the Pera Museum and Istanbul Modern.
The Istanbul Archaeological Museums and the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Sultanahmet open every day, and so does the Energy Museum at santralistanbul on the Golden Horn. Istanbul Modern, the Pera Museum, the Rahmi M. Koç Museum, the Sakıp Sabancı Museum and most other private museums close on Mondays. Hours change on public holidays, so check each Istanbul museum’s own website the week you go.
No. Hagia Sophia in Istanbul has been a working mosque since July 2020, and visits stop for the five daily prayers. Topkapı Palace across the street is still a museum.
MuseumPass Istanbul is valid for five days from your first visit at 13 museums run by the Ministry of Culture, not at private Istanbul museums such as the Pera Museum or Istanbul Modern.
Tell us which museums you want and how much time you have. We reply within a day with a plan that keeps them in one part of the city, and the name of the guide who would lead it.
