Pera Museum

The Pera Museum in Istanbul's Tepebasi neighborhood is a private art museum founded in 2005 by the Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation. It occupies the converted Bristol Hotel of 1893, a five-story building by Greek architect Achille Manoussos that served as a hotel until 1981. The collection centers on 17th-to-19th-century Orientalist paintings, including Osman Hamdi Bey's famous 1906 The Tortoise Trainer. It also holds Anatolian weights and measures and Kutahya tiles. The museum hosts internationally noted special exhibitions, with shows on Picasso and Goya in recent years, and dedicates its upper floor to video and new-media art. Its Beyoglu location makes it a natural stop after a walk down Istiklal Caddesi.