Last updated on .
The Pera Museum (Pera Müzesi) is an excellent private museum in Istanbul, Turkey. It’s located near Istiklal Street in the Beyoğlu district and is one of the best museums in the city.
History
The Pera Museum opened on June 8, 2005, and was founded by the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation. It hosts three main permanent collections as well as regular temporary exhibitions. The permanent collections are Anatolian Weights and Measures, Orientalist Paintings, and Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics.
Building
The building was formerly the Bristol Hotel, which was built in 1893 and designed by Ottoman Greek architect Achille Manoussos. The hotel operated until the 1970s. It was renovated between 2003 and 2005 by Turkish architect Sinan Genim to house the museum.
Visiting
The Pera Museum is open daily except Mondays. Adult admission is 80₺ (as of September 2023) and free every Friday evening from 6pm to 10pm. A complementary audioguide is available to all visitors. If you’re looking for a snack or drink, visit the Pera Café on the ground floor.
Temporary Exhibitions
Visits begin with an elevator ride up to the 5th floor where temporary exhibitions are on display. During my visit, I was able to see the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial. The exhibit extended to the 4th floor and included interactive displays.
After I made my way down to the 3rd floor, I saw another temporary exhibition, School Square Galatasaray.
Orientalist Paintings
On the 2nd floor are selected paintings from the Orientalist Paintings Collection, which were created by European and Ottoman artists. The most famous is The Tortoise Trainer, painted in 1906 by Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910), the founder of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. There’s also a modern art installation in the gallery.
Several beautiful landscapes of Constantinople and portraits also hang on the walls of the gallery. They’re part of the Intersecting Worlds exhibition, which includes portraits of ambassadors and art patronage from the 17th to 19th centuries.
My favorite part of the exhibition was in the next room. It includes a series of paintings depicting the audience ceremonies of European ambassadors visiting Topkapi Palace in the early 18th century. They were painted by Flemish-French artist Jean-Baptiste van Mour around 1725.
Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics
Down on the 1st floor are selected items from the Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics Collection. The collection contains over 800 items mostly dating between the 18th and 20th centuries. The exhibition, Coffee Break, explored the importance of Kütahya ceramics in the evolution of coffee culture.
The first coffeehouses opened in Istanbul in the middle of the 16th century. They quickly became popular, and evolved into important meeting places where social, economic, and political debates were held. Kütahya ceramics played a major role in the development of rituals and ceremonies of drinking coffee.
Anatolian Weights and Measures
Finally, in another gallery on the 1st floor is the Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection. It displays a only a handful of about 10,000 items, incorporating a couple interesting audio-visual items.
The collection dates back to prehistory and covers the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and modern civilizations that lived in Anatolia. It includes scales, weights, and other measuring instruments.
The items were used for measuring length, weight, and volume as well as land. They were used in fields such as architecture, jewelry making, pharmacy, shipping, and commerce.
