Bursa Kent Müzesi

Bursa City Museum occupies the light-coloured former courthouse on Heykel Square in the city centre, directly behind the Atatürk Monument and next to the Governor's building. It was opened on 14 February 2004 by Bursa Metropolitan Municipality to preserve and present the city's cultural, historical, social and economic heritage. The Culture Portal of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism describes it as Turkey's first city museum. Today it is one of the museums run by the municipality's Bursa Museums Directorate. The building is itself a Republican-era landmark worth a look. It was built in 1926 by Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, and the Bursa Site Management office notes that the design is thought to be the work of the architect Kemalettin Bey. Designed in the style of the First National Architectural Movement, it was, according to the Culture Portal, one of the city's three administrative buildings of the early Republic. The museum now uses the former Courthouse and Finance Office (Defterdarlık) buildings. The building has three levels including the basement, wide eaves and a symmetrical plan, with the entrance emphasised on the central axis and arched and rectangular windows used side by side. The Site Management office gives each floor as about 670 square metres, while the museum's own page puts the total area at 2,010 square metres. For more than 70 years the building served as the Bursa Courthouse. When it became too small, a new courthouse was designed through an architectural competition launched in 1986, and the courts moved there in 1999. The empty building was handed over to the Metropolitan Municipality in 2001 and converted into a museum during a restoration between 2001 and 2004. According to Wikipedia, the architect Naim Arnas worked on the project, and ideas such as turning the building into a restaurant or a music hall were discussed before a city museum was chosen. The main entrance is reached through the courtyard behind the Atatürk statue. A small amphitheatre in the entrance courtyard hosts concerts and recitals, and exhibitions are sometimes set up outdoors as well. The first gallery on the ground floor starts the city's story in prehistory and moves chronologically through the Bithynian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods up to the years of the War of Independence. In the same gallery, a section on the disasters the city suffered in the 18th and 19th centuries stands out. The second gallery covers the Republican period, the changing face of the city, the waves of migration to Bursa over the ages, its architecture, urban growth and Uludağ. A topographic model of the city places the walls, complexes, inns and baths in a single view, and studying it for a while is good preparation before heading down to the historic bazaar. The Culture Portal also notes that the museum holds wax figures of the six Ottoman sultans who lived in Bursa. The most popular part of the museum is the Handicrafts Bazaar in the basement. It was created on the basis of old photographs of the Bursa bazaar taken by European travellers. Laid out as a corridor with a stone-paved floor so that it feels like a living street, it lines up reconstructions of the shops of the towel weaver, cartwright, farrier, saddler, packsaddle maker, printed-scarf maker, knife maker, coppersmith and tinner, tinsmith, carpenter, felt maker, basket weaver, tile maker, confectioner and kebab cook. A separately designed silk section is also one of the museum's most striking areas. According to Wikipedia, craftspeople present their work to visitors in workshops held at weekends. The first floor is devoted to Bursa's traditional way of life. Thermal baths, food culture, the gezek gatherings and the shadow-play figures Karagöz and Hacivat are presented on this floor, along with ethnographic objects donated to the museum. According to the Culture Portal, the corridors on every floor are used for temporary exhibitions, so a return visit a few months later offers something different. The museum's city memory section collects and preserves historical documents, books, films, documentaries and photographs relating to Bursa. There is a small library and reading room for researchers, as well as a multipurpose hall for multivision shows and small meetings. The building also has a museum cafe and a museum shop. The museum runs education programmes for everyone from pre-school children to adults, and it organises out-of-school learning activities together with the Provincial Directorate of National Education. All group visits require advance booking, and activities are designed for ages six and up. Wheelchair users can reach every floor by lifts and ramps, and the building has an accessible toilet and wheelchairs available on loan. The Site Management office reports that the museum welcomes an average of 70,000 to 80,000 visitors a year. According to the Culture Portal, the museum was named the third best museum of the year at the European Museum Forum award ceremony held in Lisbon in May 2006. Museums run by Bursa Müze are closed on Mondays, on 1 January and on the first day of religious holidays. Check current opening hours and ticket information on bursamuze.com. It is worth allowing at least an hour to see all the floors without rushing. The T1 tram line ends at Heykel, so the tram takes you straight to the square. Those arriving on the BursaRay metro can change to the T1 line at Demirtaşpaşa station. The museum is a good starting point for getting an overview of the city's history before walking on to the bazaar and inns district.