Mersin Archaeological Museum

Eastern Mediterranean


This purpose-built museum, which opened in 2017, is one of the best in provincial Turkey and will help you to put much of what you've seen along the coast in perspective. In eight halls over two floors it exhibits finds from nearby tumuli (burial mounds) like Yumuktepe and sites including Kanlıdivane and Elaiussa Sebaste near Kızkalesi, a great statue of Dionysus and curious odds and ends, such as a Roman-era glass theatre 'token', Hellenistic figurines and Hittite artefacts around 3500 years old.

Visitors enter via a `time tunnel' starting with the Palaeolithic and concluding with the Iron Age. Finds are exhibited opposite the chronology, the English translations are excellent and much multimedia effects are in use. There's also a superb ethnographical section with much attention devoted to the Yörüks, nomadic Turkmen people prevalent in this area since the early 16th century.