Ethnography Museum of Ankara

Opened in 1930, the Ethnography Museum of Ankara was one of the first state museums of the young Turkish Republic, displaying folk art, traditional dress, ceramics, and everyday objects from Anatolian culture. The building holds a particularly solemn place in Turkish national memory: following Atatürk's death in 1938, his body lay in state here for fifteen years until it was transferred to the Anıtkabir mausoleum in 1953. The white marble structure, with its neoclassical cubic form, is itself a product of the Kemalist building programme that reshaped Ankara into a modern capital. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 09:00–17:00, and remains one of the more focused collections for understanding Ottoman-era and early Republican folk tradition.