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The ETİ Archaeology Museum (ETİ Arkeoloji Müzesi) is one of the most important museums of its kind in Turkey. It’s located in the city of Eskişehir.
History
The ETİ Archaeology Museum was officially founded in 1974. The current building, which was financed by local food company ETİ, opened on May 28, 2011. It sits on 1,300 square meters of land and has a usable area of 4,000 square meters. The collection consists of 22,500 pieces spanning from the Neolithic Age to the Ottoman period, of which about 2,000 are on display.
Visiting
The museum is open daily and admission is 75₺ (as of December 2023). It’s located on Atatürk Boulevard, just a short walk from both the modern city center and Odunpazarı.
All of the displays are in Turkish and English and it’s very well organized. There’s also a café on the premises. Overall, we spent about an hour browsing through the collection and enjoyed our visit.
Garden
Walking through the garden to the museum entrance, we were able to see several stone items. They include sarcophagi, grave steles, and sculptures.
First Floor
Inside the museum, we started with the first floor exhibition hall. Artifacts are displayed in chronological order along the walls and in glass cases in the center of the hall. There’s also an interactive exhibit in which visitors can explore a virtual tomb.
Artifacts from excavations at several different archaeological sites in the region include coins, jewelry, weapons, glass containers, terra-cotta items, marble statues, architectural items, steles, idols, beads, and metal items.
The items were found at places such as Demircihöyük, Çavlum Necropolis, Dorylaeum, the Phrygian Valley, Alpu Kozakızlar Tumulus, Pessinus, and the Han Underground City.
Represented are the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze, Hittite, Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk, and Ottoman periods.
Ground Floor
On the ground floor, the first exhibition hall displays impressive mosaic floors and statues. They were found at various archaeological sites.
The second exhibition hall includes sarcophagi and grave steles from different periods. Most were from the Hellenistic, Roman, Seljuk, and Ottoman periods. It was nice to see the grave steles were translated into Turkish and English.
