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A Museum Day on the Ege University Campus

Most people in İzmir know Bornova as the eastern end of the metro line, a place of student crowds and the road to the hospital.

Radar TürkiyeRadar Türkiye15 Ekim 2026
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A Museum Day on the Ege University Campus

Most people in İzmir know Bornova as the eastern end of the metro line, a place of student crowds and the road to the hospital. Yet the campus of Ege University and Gençlik Caddesi, the avenue that runs beside it, hold one of the densest clusters of museums in the city. Five separate collections, stretching from fossils to folk instruments and from a miniature print billed as the smallest book in the world to classical Anatolian carpets, stand within walking distance of one another. This article explains how to fit them into a single weekday. We give no fees or opening hours; both can change, and every museum publishes its current details on its own page.

Why a weekday

There is one rule to know before you plan: the university museums are research units and keep office hours. The official page of the Natural History Museum states that it is closed on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays; the Ethnography Museum and the Museum of Paper and Book Arts are also visited on weekdays. Arkas Sanat Bornova, just outside the campus, is closed only on Mondays according to its own page. The best day for a museum day is therefore any day from Tuesday to Friday. Because the Natural History Museum takes a midday break, giving it the morning and leaving the afternoon to the mansions makes the day easier. Large groups such as school trips must book ahead with the Natural History Museum; for individual visitors and families entry is charged, with discounts for some groups, so check the current rates on the museum websites.

Getting to the campus

Ege University was founded by a law passed in 1955, began teaching in 1956 and became the first university in the Aegean Region and the fifth in Turkey. Its Bornova campus covers an area of about 3,450 decares, so it is walkable but not small. The easiest way in is line M1 of the İzmir Metro. Ege Üniversitesi station, which lies inside the campus, opened in 2012 and has two entrances; the previous stop, Bornova station, comes out near the Faculty of Medicine and the hospital. Anyone coming from Konak or Halkapınar can ride the metro straight to the campus. The Arkas Sanat Bornova page notes that the closest bus stop to the mansion is the Rektörlük stop, served by several bus lines running to Evka 3 metro station. Marking the buildings on the university's campus map before you set out saves you from getting lost on the large grounds.

Morning, the Natural History Museum

Start the day with fossils. The idea of a natural history museum attached to the Ege University Faculty of Science was first raised in 1963 and realised in 1967, and the collection was first opened to the public in 1973 as part of the programme for the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic. Since 1991 the museum has operated as the Natural History Research and Application Centre attached to the Rectorate. The exhibition is divided into six galleries, and each gallery page gives its number of objects. The largest piece in the Entrance Gallery is a full-size polyester skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex, twelve metres long and five metres high. The same gallery holds mammal fossils found in Turkey such as a sabre-toothed cat, Archaeopteryx, considered the ancestor of birds, and red travertine columns typical of the Kütahya area.

The Palaeontology Gallery is the busiest section of the museum. Here the fossils are arranged by geological time and evolution; Carboniferous fern fossils and the fossils of elephants, rhinoceroses and the giraffe family can be followed in sequence. Two pieces in this gallery draw particular attention: a human footprint formed after a volcanic eruption around ten thousand years ago in the Salihli area, and the skeleton of a Syrian elephant found in the Gavur Gölü marsh in Kahramanmaraş. The Rock and Mineral Gallery shows giant quartz crystals alongside samples of marble, perlite and coal, and explains volcanism with sound and smoke effects. The Birds Gallery shows 104 species observed in the Aegean, and the General Zoology Gallery displays two specimens of the Anatolian panther from the Selçuk area. In the Evolution and Comparative Osteology Gallery, skeletons of a whale, an ostrich and a kangaroo stand beside the skeleton of a Roman period person who lived in Uşak. If you come with children, start with the dinosaur and leave the birds for last; this museum easily fills an hour.

Midday, the Ethnography Museum

When the Natural History Museum breaks for lunch, move on to the Ethnography Museum. Its building is known today as Sirkehane; it was built between the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its first owner is unknown. According to the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality's city guide, the building passed to the Treasury in 1943, and in the 1960s its rear section was used by the Faculty of Agriculture for vinegar and pickle production while the front served as staff housing. Transferred to the university through an exchange in 1990, the building, much of which had been demolished, was rebuilt in 2010 and became a private museum the same year with the approval of the Ministry of Culture. Its stone and brick facade, as you see in the cover image, makes a quiet corner inside the garden.

Inside are 2,100 pieces of traditional clothing from the Balkan countries and the Turkic world, 110 folk instruments, jewellery, weapons, chests and cupboards. The total number of objects is given as 2,499 on the university's Turkish page and 3,400 on its English page; the difference probably comes from counting displayed and stored pieces separately. The most talked about section of the museum is the wedding house. Here the henna night, the dowry display, the preparation of the wedding meal and the custom of writing up the dowry are re-enacted in the setting of a 19th century İzmir house. Another section keeps traditional trades alive, such as woodworking, shoemaking, copperwork and tailoring. A temporary exhibition hall and a meeting hall used for talks and recitals are also part of the museum. The garden has a cafeteria area decorated with farming tools; taking your lunch break here suits the flow of the day.

Afternoon, the Museum of Paper and Book Arts

After the ethnography collection, turn towards the old mansions of the campus. The Museum of Paper and Book Arts was founded on 12 December 2012 in the Ballian Residence, a 19th century building among the Levantine mansions belonging to the university; it gained private museum status in 2013 and is presented as the first museum of its kind in Turkey. Its collection of nearly a thousand objects was assembled through donations from individuals, institutions and artists. The ground floor tells the story of paper: organic writing materials such as papyrus and parchment, the process by which paper is made, coloured papers of the world from the 15th century to today and contemporary paper art. The upper floor is devoted to the book. The printing section holds an original incunabulum page printed on the Gutenberg press and an original copy of the Vankulu Dictionary printed by the İbrahim Müteferrika press.

Do not rush this museum. The artists' books section has three-dimensional books by Andy Warhol, the children's books section has three-dimensional editions of works such as The Little Prince and Alice in Wonderland, and the masters in books section holds original prints by Picasso, Chagall and Matisse. Original examples of traditional book arts such as calligraphy, illumination, miniature painting, paper cutting and marbling are spread across both floors. The piece that draws the most interest is a miniature book printed by hand on silk paper, measuring 2.4 by 2.9 millimetres. Some of the works are shown in darkened rooms, where the details of the bindings can be examined up close. Every year during Museums Week the museum holds workshops and talks linked to its collection; if your visit falls in that week, follow the programme in advance.

Among the mansions, La Fontaine Köşkü

The university writes that it has restored eight of Bornova's Levantine mansions faithfully to their original form and given each of them a new function. The best known of them is the Big House, used as the Rectorate building; records note that Charlton Whittall bought it in 1836. Since most of these mansions work as offices their interiors cannot be toured, but one of them is a museum. La Fontaine Köşkü stands next to Murat Köşkü and takes its name from the first owner in the records, James La Fontaine. The mansion was bought in 1963 for the university's building needs; in later years it housed the School for the Blind, gendarmerie and artillery units and the Institute of Public Health, and it returned to the university in 1996. Since its restoration in 2010 it has served as the Research and Application Centre and museum for Atatürk's Principles and the History of the Revolution.

The building, made up of a basement and two floors, has a plain facade; its arched entrance door and the cast iron balcony overlooking the main road are its most distinctive features. The Wikipedia article notes that most of the original interior decoration, such as frescoes and plaster ceilings, has been lost over time. So the main thing to look at here is the architecture read from outside; framing the balcony and the arched doorway together from across the road gives the best photograph. The museum's visiting arrangements should be followed on the university's unit pages.

The end of the day, Arkas Sanat Bornova

Close the day just outside the campus, at Mattheys Köşkü on Gençlik Caddesi. The date of the mansion is disputed: Wikipedia gives both an estimate of 1780 and the date of 1860 found in some sources, and according to the architect who led the restoration, the building grew with additions over different periods. For a long time it was known as the Wood-Paterson House. The painter and composer Hortense Wood lived here until her death in 1924; it is said that she took piano lessons from Franz Liszt and that Liszt played the piano in the part of the mansion called the Cairo Room. The building was bought in 2018, went through a restoration lasting five years and opened to visitors in 2023.

Today the mansion shows a selection from the Arkas Carpet Collection. According to the institution's page, the selection consists mainly of carpets woven in Western Anatolia between the 15th and 19th centuries; alongside the Uşak carpets known by names such as Holbein, Lotto, Star Uşak and Medallion Uşak, there are carpets from the Gördes, Bergama, Kula, Milas and Konya regions. According to Wikipedia there are some seventy-five carpets in ten rooms, plus a room with a weaving loom, yarns and tools, and a room where a short documentary is shown. In the garden, a nine-hole mini golf course built in memory of the Bornova Golf Club, which closed in 1970, has a ceramic model of a Bornova mansion placed on each hole; it is a lovely way to end, repeating the mansion tour in miniature.

Practical notes

  • Plan the day for Tuesday to Friday; the university museums are closed at weekends and Arkas Sanat Bornova is closed on Mondays.
  • The order of Natural History in the morning, Ethnography at midday, Paper and Book Arts and La Fontaine in the afternoon and Mattheys Köşkü at the end best fits the lunch break and the closing times.
  • Visitors coming with a school or a large group should book ahead with the Natural History Museum and with Arkas Sanat.
  • The campus is a place of study; keep quiet around faculty buildings during exam periods and enter only the units open to visitors.
  • You can read this alongside our article on Levantine İzmir, which tells the history of these mansions in more depth.

Sources

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