Pera Museum

This private museum located in the heart of the vibrant Pera district is a must see for all art lovers. The museum includes not only part of the private collection of Suna & İnan Kirac couple as permanent collection but also various temporary collections. For instance currently it hosts Paula Rego’s exhibition. As for the permanent collection, it covers a wide range from paintings (including the most famous tableau of Turkish painting “the tortoise trainer” by Osman Hamdi) to archaeological findings. Museum has a very rich museum shop and a large museum café as well. This is one of the best art museums of Turkey. Despite that, there usually are no queues at the entrance (except for weekends when sometimes there are children workshops and it gets crowded around noon but that doesn’t last long). Entrance is subject to a fee and with additional fee, you can also have access to an audio guide.

Go and see this little Museum in Pera. 5 floors of really interesting works. The top two floors were dedicated to an artist called Paula, then art work depicting modern life and struggles in Istanbul and then the absolute MUST SEE.. the tortoise trainer...WOW!

Another very nice museum in the Istiklal Street. This museum is ina historical building with a nice coffee shop in it. When you have a lot of time, then visit this nice museum.

Nice museum with very different art forms. We went there to see the Turtoise trainer. Impressive to see in real and learn more about the life of Osman Hamdi Bey.

Save this for a second visit to Istanbul if you have limited time, there are many other places that are priority. We went on a Saturday afternoon and it wasn't very crowded, maybe a dozen people were there. This was a small museum of three floors, most of it was a little boring so I could see why it was not included on our "Best of Turkey" 13 day tour (with three days in Istanbul). It took me an hour to go slowly through all the exhibits, and my favorite were the paintings on the top floor. At the end we stopped in at the small cafe and had a lemonade and some sweets, which were good, not outstanding though. Current exhibits were "Intersection Worlds: Ambassadors and painters - 17th to 19th Centuries from the Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation Collection", "Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection", and "Coffee Break, the Adventure of Coffee in Kutahya Tiles and Ceramics".