The Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum
The idea of opening a museum in Şanlıurfa occurred in 1948, and the first attempt to build this museum started with collecting the existing artefacts in a storage room in Ataturk Primary School. In 1956, a place was reserved in the Sehit Nusret Primary School, and artefacts started to be collected there. After this, the area was not enough for the artefacts to be kept, and the urgency of exhibiting these artefacts, which show the history of thousands of years of the region, led to the need for a new museum building to be built. In 1965, in the Sehitlik Area of the Şanlıurfa city centre, the construction of the museum building started on a 1500 square meters area.
Yenimahalle Statue
Şanlıurfa Museum was opened to visitors in 1969 after the building construction, and the exhibition arrangement works were completed. However, the intensity of archaeological research in Şanlıurfa caused this museum to be insufficient after a while. For this purpose, the new three-storey "Şanlıurfa Archeological Museum" in southern Sanliurfa, which is a place of renewal and is close to the Balikligol, shopping malls and hotels in the city and is on a 60.000 decare area and has a 29.000 square meters indoor space; "Mosaic Museum" on an area of 5,000 square meters, where the mosaics unearthed in Haleplibahçe will be exhibited; and between these two museums, the archaeopark area where experimental archaeological studies can be carried out between both museums, was built and opened to visitors in 2015. Şanlıurfa Archeology Museum is designed as a large complex. It contains 14 main exhibition halls, and 33 animation areas are available.
In the Archaeopark area, located between the Archeology Museum and the Mosaic Museum, there are examples of buildings that reflect the architectural characteristics of the period, listed chronologically, and places where productions for tourism can be made, primarily reflecting the art of the period. In addition, there is an excavation training area where experimental archaeological studies can be conducted to better explain how excavation works are carried out in the Archeopark area, especially for school-age children.
Among the 65.000 pieces in the Şanlıurfa Archaeological Museum's warehouses, 5,000 artefacts are currently on display. The ones that are not shown are planned to be revealed by turns. In the museum's exhibition halls, chronologically, first, the Paleolithic Age finds and periodical reenactments. Then, the world's oldest human-size statue, "Yenimahalle Statue" dated to the Neolithic Period and in chronological order, Göbeklitepe excavation finds and reenactments, Nevali Çori public building, Chalcolithic Period, Bronze and Iron Age finds and reenactments, artefacts from the Hellenistic, Roman, Eastern Roman and most recent Islamic Periods are exhibited. Şanlıurfa Archeology Museum, which has a privileged place among the world museums in terms of Göbeklitepe and Neolithic period artefacts, and the Mosaic Museum with its "Amazon Women" depicted on the mosaic for the first time in the world, await visitors from our country and the world.
Source : Şanlıurfa Museum Directorate
Address : Haleplibahçe Mahallesi, 2372. Sk. No:74/1, 63200
E-mail : sanliurfamuzesi@kultur.gov.tr
Phone : +90-414 313 15 88
