From Basmane Station to Kültürpark with Archive, Museum and Fair

Begin the day in 9 Eylül Meydanı in front of the station, looking at the building from a little distance. According to Wikipedia, the concession for the İzmir-Kasaba railway was granted in 1863, construction of the station began in 1864 and the station entered service on 25 October 1866. The same source describes it as the second oldest station in Turkey after Alsancak Station. Visit İzmir, on the other hand, writes that the present building was put up in 1876 by the French company Regie Generale and that its design belongs to Eiffel; since the two dates and the claim about the architect do not agree across the sources, it is safest to read the building as a work of the second half of the nineteenth century. Looking closely at the facade, you see a three-part composition in cut stone on a rectangular plan. The central section rises above the two sides, has three storeys and is covered with a hipped roof; the pediment above the entrance and the mouldings that divide the facade carry the neoclassical language. The low wings stretching to either side hold the waiting rooms and service units. Because the square is quiet early in the morning, that is the easiest hour to take the whole facade in a single frame.

Then go inside and pass from the waiting hall to the platforms. The station is still a busy one today; Wikipedia writes that besides the main-line trains to Ankara, Bandırma and Konya, regional trains leave from here for Ödemiş, Tire, Denizli, Söke, Nazilli and Uşak. There are four platforms at ground level, and beneath the station lies the Basmane station of the M1 metro, opened on 22 May 2000. The building was damaged in the Great Fire of İzmir in 1922 and repaired in the republican period; according to Wikipedia it was renewed by TCDD in 1984, fitted with electrification infrastructure in 2001, and a new restoration began in 2022. For that reason you may find some parts scaffolded or closed; follow the staff's directions and do not cross the yellow line on the platforms. According to Visit İzmir, the station is the main building of a campus of about twenty thousand square metres that the state set aside for the railway; workshops, depots and administrative units share the same grounds. It was no accident that the station was the most important stop on the line in its early days, because goods arriving from Kasaba, today's Turgutlu, entered the city through this station, which served as a customs gate. Turning back from the end of the platforms, you notice that the rear facade of the building is plainer than the front.

The surroundings of the station are part of the walk too. Across the square rises the 9 Eylül Gate of Kültürpark; this is the park's entrance facing Basmane, and at the third stop of the route you will enter not here but through the Lozan Gate on the west. Anafartalar Caddesi runs from the front of the station southwest towards Kemeraltı; that street lies outside this route, but it can be tried on the way back if you have time. The best angle for a photograph is the pavement across the square; at midday the facade gets flat light and the colour of the stone goes dull. For a visitor interested in trains, even watching one of the regional trains depart is a scene in itself. When the half hour is up, cross from the square to Dr. Refik Saydam Bulvarı and walk towards Lozan Meydanı with the park wall on your right. The way is level and shaded; at the end of the boulevard the facade of the city archive with its five recesses greets you.

Source: Wikipedia; Visit İzmir; Wikipedia.

When you reach Lozan Meydanı, stop in front of the two-storey building with the wide courtyard at the head of Şair Eşref Bulvarı. According to APİKAM's own history, this building was put up between 1930 and 1932 as the Central Fire Station of İzmir to a design by the municipal architect Mesut Özok, and it worked without interruption as a fire station for seventy years, from 1932 to the end of 2001. The five large recesses on the front are the old garage doors; the engines drove out through them, and the high-ceilinged garage is today the museum's main exhibition hall. The building carries the marks of early republican architecture, and its restoration began in February 2002. The museum opened on 10 January 2004 under the name İzmir City Archive and Museum; the name of Ahmet Piriştina, the mayor who died in office on 15 June of that year, was given to the institution by a council decision of 6 July 2004. İzmir Art presents this institution as the first city archive and museum in Turkey.

Inside there are two separate worlds, and give time to both. The exhibition hall on the ground floor is devoted to temporary shows; in this space of 359 square metres APİKAM mounts exhibitions that tell the history of the city through a single theme, and in earlier years titles such as City and Trade, City and Health and City and Transport were shown. The exhibition of the 2024-2025 season, called Burnt Homeland, dealt with the fires in İzmir and western Anatolia during the War of Independence; find out at the entrance which exhibition is open when you visit. Read the panels without hurrying, because the photographs and maps here also show the burnt ground on which Kültürpark, the next stop on the route, was laid out. The real treasure is the archive upstairs. According to İzmir Dergisi, the collection holds 1,834 Ottoman court registers containing more than a hundred thousand documents, about 1,440 volumes of Ottoman-script newspapers and close to 8,000 volumes printed in the Latin alphabet; the library keeps some 11,000 books donated by Piriştina and the historian Orhan Koloğlu. The institution's website divides the collection into groups such as periodicals, written documents, visual documents, registers, rare works and books. Documents are microfilmed and scanned into digital form, and researchers reach them from the computers upstairs; according to Wikipedia the archive has also been open over the internet since December 2019. If you want to look up the name of an İzmir relative or an old neighbourhood, ask a member of staff for help, because the catalogue can be confusing for a first-time visitor.

The building itself is an exhibit too. Go out into the courtyard and walk around the building; the proportions of the garage front and the wide courtyard still make the original function legible today. According to Wikipedia, the institution received the Archive and Collection Museum award from the Association of Historic Towns in 2018 and was included in the European Route of Industrial Heritage in April 2026. APİKAM also has branches such as the Migration and Population Exchange Memory House in Buca and the Village Institutes Memory and Culture House in Konak; you do not call at them on this route, but if the signs in the exhibition catch your interest, note them for another day. Be sure to check one thing before you go; the institution's official website gives both Şair Eşref Bulvarı 1/A and Hall 1 inside Kültürpark as its address, so the exhibition or the reading room may have moved temporarily to the hall inside the park. In that case the hall is already inside your next stop and the order of the walk is not disturbed. When the hour is up, go out to the boulevard; the Lozan Gate is a few steps away, and Kültürpark begins there.

Source: APİKAM; İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi; İzmir Dergisi; İzmir Art; Wikipedia.

When you enter the campus at Ziya Gökalp Bulvarı 36, first stand for a minute among the brick facades, because this was a factory before it was a museum. According to Wikipedia, the Alsancak Tekel Factory processed tobacco from 1884 to 2004; according to a report by Anadolu Agency, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism restored the buildings in 2022, and the campus of twenty thousand square metres, with twelve of its buildings given new functions, opened on 29 April 2023 under the name İzmir Culture and Arts Factory. The İzmir Painting and Sculpture Museum is in the second largest building of the factory; follow the signs at the entrance and go to this building first. According to the museum's own page, the institution opened on 9 September 1952 as a gallery in the Ministry of Education building inside Kültürpark, moved in 1973 to its building in Konak and stayed there until 2022. The institution's page names that first building as a design by the architect Bruno Taut. According to Wikipedia, the Konak building stood near Konak pier, on Atatürk Bulvarı, on land belonging to Ege University. When the Konak building was damaged in the earthquake of 30 October 2020, the collection returned to Kültürpark, began service there on 25 March 2022, and opened to visitors in its present home in April 2023. So the park you have just walked through is both the place where this museum was born and the place where it took shelter after the earthquake; the route follows that story in reverse.

Inside, according to Anadolu Agency, there are four main galleries and two temporary exhibition halls, and about four hundred works are on display; another AA report from 2025 gives the number as three hundred and fifty, so the number of works on show changes from time to time. The collection covers painting, sculpture, ceramics and original prints from the Tanzimat period to the present day. Walk through the halls in chronological order and look in the first galleries for early painters such as Şeker Ahmed Paşa and Hoca Ali Rıza. In the following halls come the works of İbrahim Çallı, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu and Fahrelnisa Zeid; look for Füreya Koral in the ceramics cases and for the sculptor Turgut Pura in the sculpture section. According to Wikipedia, the weight of the collection lies in twentieth-century Turkish painting and sculpture, and there is a considerable group of works by Turgut Pura. Ask at the entrance about the programme in the temporary exhibition halls, because the museum also mounts thematic shows during the year. Photographing the works without flash is usually allowed, but check with the attendant in each hall and do not step over the tapes around the sculptures.

If you have time left, look into the other buildings on the same campus; the Archaeology and Ethnography Museum right next to the museum holds thousands of objects, and AA mentions the roughly 2,300-year-old pieces of the Belevi Mausoleum here, so if you could not see them in Kültürpark, you will find the griffins of Belevi here. The campus also has the Atatürk Specialised Library, the Alsancak Public Library, the Turkic World Music Specialised Library and a children's library; AA writes that the libraries welcomed more than four hundred thousand visitors in 2024. According to the same agency's report of 2023, the Turkic World Music Specialised Library holds close to a hundred thousand books and the Alsancak Public Library forty thousand. According to Wikipedia, the Painting and Sculpture Museum today works under the İzmir Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism. The Müze Kart page shows the campus open every day, but check the hours and the fee on its official website before you go. The benches in the courtyard suit the last break of the day; the tall chimney and brick walls of the factory photograph well in evening light. The route ends in this courtyard. For the way back you can walk a few minutes from the campus to Alsancak Station and take İZBAN, or go down to the Kordon and close the day by the sea.

Source: İzmir Kültür Sanat Fabrikası; Anadolu Ajansı; Müze Kart; Wikipedia; Wikipedia.