Ahmet Piriştina Kent Arşivi ve Müzesi

The Ahmet Piriştina City Archive and Museum, known by its short name APİKAM, is the institution that gathers the memory of İzmir under one roof, and it is referred to as Turkey's first city archive and city museum. The institution grew out of a pledge in the 1999 election manifesto of Ahmet Piriştina, then mayor of the Metropolitan Municipality; the archive and museum project was set up on scientific criteria in 2000. It opened on 10 January 2004 under the name İzmir City Archive and Museum. After Piriştina died in office in June 2004, the municipal council gave the institution his name on 6 July 2004. The building matters as much as the institution itself. The structure on Şair Eşref Bulvarı, in the Çankaya quarter of Konak, was commissioned by the municipality between 1930 and 1932 as İzmir's central fire station; its architect is Mesut Özok. Bearing the marks of early Republican architecture, the building was one of the priority investments after the city lost 2,600,000 square metres of settled area in the great fire of September 1922; a law of 1924 had made fire services compulsory for municipalities. With its wide hangar doors and its raised observation tower for spotting fire and smoke in the city early, it is an industrial building whose form was determined by its function. For seventy years, from 1932 to November 2001, it worked as a fire station. The restoration that began with a ceremony on 8 February 2002 was completed in April 2004; the garage and the observation tower were preserved and the building was turned into a museum. In April 2026 it was added to the European Route of Industrial Heritage together with the Historic Gasworks and the Historic Elevator. Inside there are two main units: the archive and the museum. In the main exhibition hall of roughly 400 square metres in the former garage, the history of the city is told with visual material selected from the archive; the exhibitions change from time to time. The archive is organised in eight groups: periodicals, written documents, visual documents, registers, rare works, books, the İBB City Library and the open archive. Among the registers are Ottoman-era court registers and municipal council records. Since December 2019 the archive has been open to researchers online; the collections can be searched with a free membership, and those who want copies of images pay a fee set by the municipal council. In 2018 the institution received the archive and collection museum award from the Union of Historic Towns. City history and culture classes are given by appointment; because the library and research services and the museum and exhibition unit work through separate phone lines, decide in advance which unit you are going to. APİKAM also has three memorial houses in the city. The Migration and Population Exchange Memorial House in Buca, in a Chios-style Greek house of 1904 on Kasaplar Meydanı, tells the story of migrations from the Balkans to Turkey. The Village Institutes Memorial and Culture House in Konak and the Press Memorial House in the garden of the Aziz Vukolos Church belong to the same institution. A warning is needed before a visit. While the contact page of the institution's own website gives the address Şair Eşref Bulvarı No 1/A, other pages of the site also show the Metropolitan Municipality's address in Hall No 1 inside Kültürpark; before you go, check the museum's opening days, hours and address at apikam.org.tr. Those who want to work in the archive should first search the online catalogue and then call the institution about examining material on site. For transport, the T2 tram follows Gazi Bulvarı and Şair Eşref Bulvarı; the Gazi Bulvarı stop has an interchange with the Çankaya station of the M1 metro and is a few minutes' walk from the museum. The Kültürpark - Atatürk Lisesi stop is also close. Basmane Station is about 500 metres away and the gates of Kültürpark are a few minutes away; this is why APİKAM is the natural stop on a walk from Basmane to Kültürpark. When visiting, look at the facade first: the vertical lines on the rendered surface, the wide garage openings and the tower behind immediately give away the building's fire-station past. The angle in which the tower appears together with the tall buildings behind it gathers two eras of the city into a single frame. Inside, follow the exhibition in its chronological flow; the most enjoyable part of the museum is going out afterwards and looking for the streets in the old photographs in Kemeraltı and Basmane. The museum can be seen in an hour; for those who will work in the archive, the time depends on the size of the task. When you leave, walking along Şair Eşref Bulvarı and entering Kültürpark through its gate is the natural continuation of the visit.