Reşat Oyal Kültür Parkı

Reşat Oyal Culture Park, which the people of Bursa simply call Kültürpark, is a large city park stretching between the city centre and Çekirge. It was opened in 1955 as Kültürpark by the mayor of the time, Reşat Oyal, and took his name in 1999. The Culture Portal describes it as the city's first large landscaped green space. Sources put its area at a little over 390,000 square metres; Wikipedia and the Culture Portal give 393,000 and the Metropolitan Municipality 391,000 square metres. According to Wikipedia, the park's layout is based on designs obtained through a national competition held in 1958 and a second competition in 1985 aimed at turning the park into a fairground. About 143,000 square metres of the park are green space, with around 5,000 trees of 61 species. Among them are species such as the Caucasian wingnut and the ginkgo. The registered monumental trees include two magnolias, a Uludağ fir and a plane tree known locally as the Historic Yağcılar Plane. Since the first festival in 1963, the park has hosted the International Bursa Festival. At the centre of the park is a lake where you can take a boat out, surrounded by tea gardens and places to rest. According to the Culture Portal, the Archaeological Museum, the Municipal Conservatory, the Open-Air Theatre, a wedding hall and a funfair are among the buildings inside the park. The Metropolitan Municipality has announced that it no longer charges pedestrians an entrance fee; check the municipality's current announcements for conditions of entry by car. For a long walk, starting around the lake and following the tree-lined paths towards the museum is an easy way to see different corners of the park. The Bursa Archaeological Museum inside the park is one of the city's oldest cultural institutions. It was founded in 1904 as a branch of the Imperial Museum, and the Ministry's museum page describes it as Turkey's third oldest museum after those of Istanbul and Konya. It first opened in the building of the Bursa Boys' High School, moved to the Yeşil Medrese in 1930, and in 1972 its archaeology section moved into its present building in Kültürpark. According to Wikipedia, the building was designed by the architect Ertem Yücel and the museum opened to visitors on 15 July 1972. With no other museum nearby, it served for many years as a regional museum; until the İznik Museum opened it was responsible for Ilıpınar Höyük, and until the Balıkesir Museum was founded, for the excavations at Antandros and Daskyleion. Wikipedia states that the museum holds some 25,000 objects, about 2,000 of which are on display. The objects are displayed in chronological order. The first hall runs from the Miocene to the Phrygian Kingdom and shows the fossil known in the scientific literature as the Paşalar Elephant, together with finds from the Paşalar Fossil Bed in Mustafakemalpaşa. In the same hall, the skeleton of a woman of about 30 found in the Aktopraklık Höyük excavations is displayed with her grave goods, alongside a model of the mound. The museum's signature pieces are the Roman bronze bust of Athena and bronze statue of Apollo found at the ancient city of Miletopolis in Mustafakemalpaşa; both stand in a megaron-plan room lined with marble portraits. The second hall runs from the Archaic period to the end of the Eastern Roman period, with finds from Antandros, Roman glass, oil lamps and a coin section on the mezzanine. A bronze statue of a child carrying a dog, found in Mudanya, and a gold diadem from a Hellenistic sarcophagus uncovered in a rescue excavation in Gemlik are also among the museum's highlights. A separate hall displays a reconstruction of a war chariot, made on the basis of the wheel fragments and horse harness found in the Üç Pınar Tumulus during a rescue excavation in 1988, together with three funerary steles in the Greco-Persian style. According to Wikipedia, the museum garden also holds a rich collection of steles. The Ministry's museum page currently lists the Bursa Archaeological Museum as temporarily closed to visitors. If you want to see the museum, check its current visiting status and opening hours on muze.gov.tr before setting out. The park is close to the Kültürpark station on the BursaRay line, which also serves the museum and the Atatürk Museum. The Kültürpark-Millet Bahçesi stop on the T1 tram line is another way to reach the park. The Culture Portal also notes that it can be reached by bus from the city centre. Sitting by the lake is a good break in the middle of a day full of museum and bazaar visits.