The Turkish city of Alanya has a rich history, and the exposition of the City Museum is proof of this. The museum was built in 1967, but the number of exhibits in it is regularly increasing, and the collection of artefacts is constantly updated. Excavations are constantly being carried out on the territory of the Turkish State, so a large number of exhibits are waiting their turn to be included in the permanent exhibition. The museum staff often travels to historical sites to evaluate the finds. Quite often, museum specialists collaborate with foreign archaeologists for a more thorough analysis of priceless and historically significant items.
The museum building has an unusual structure and consists of one external and fourteen internal exhibition halls. The museum's exposition is a collection of artefacts from historical periods such as Phrygian, Lydian, Greek and Byzantine. At the entrance to the museum, huge showcases display architectural monuments from the Bronze Age, such states as Phrygia, Urartu, Lydia, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece and Byzantium. The large hall of the museum exhibits Byzantine and ancient Roman items made of fired clay, glass, bronze and marble, writing in the language of the Karamanid principality, and mosaics from the 7th-5th centuries BC.
In the archaeology hall there is the oldest exhibit of the Archaeological Museum - a stone with an inscription in the language of Phoenicians, dated 625 BC. No less historically valuable finds of the Alania Museum are a tombstone stele made in the first century BC and fragments of ancient inscriptions.
The most valuable exhibit of the Archaeological Museum is the statue of Heracles, a hero of ancient myths and legends, well known to this day. It was cast in bronze in the second century BC and today is in a separate hall. The 51.5 centimetre high sculpture was discovered in 1967 in the mountain village of Asartepe, north-east of Alanya. Historians believe that the monument was brought here by the pirates who dominated the mountainous Cilicia as a trophy from a ship they had robbed or from some locality. The sculpture amazes with the high skill of the author who made it. The muscles of the body are very realistically executed, the hair and beard of the man are plausibly depicted, his face has such a lively expression that surprises even the sophisticated viewer. Looking at the sculpture of Heracles, you can feel his fatigue from the feats performed and satisfaction from the next victory, feel his extraordinary strength.
The highlight of the Alanya Archaeological Museum is the extensive exposition of the so-called ash vessels. These finds date back to the Byzantine and Roman periods, they are made in the form of a sarcophagus and their lids are saddle-shaped. On the wide walls of the vessels there are various drawings, plant garlands, figures of a rider, in some places between the patterns there are images of male and female faces, and on some vessels there are even ancient Greek inscriptions. The vessels are arranged both in the museum building and in the garden. They are made of limestone, which was available in large quantities in Alania, and are connected with the burial custom that existed here in ancient times. It is very difficult to excavate in the rocky rocks of this area, so the locals burnt the body of the deceased and placed his ashes in special vessels. Burning the deceased was a sign of respect for him, moreover, this rite guaranteed immortality not only to the deceased, but also to all his relatives.
Among the exhibits of the museum there is a large collection of coins, which are artefacts of the Ancient Greek period, Byzantine, Roman, Ottoman and Seljuk empires; there are also coins from the time of the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey. The museum has an interesting collection of weapons from the Ottoman era (bows, guns, arrows, swords). One of the attractions of the museum is the handwritten text of the Holy Qur'an.
The second half of the museum is dedicated to ethnographic artefacts of the Ottoman and Seljuk era. Here it is interesting to see a part of an ancient house of those times, recreated according to the results of excavations in Alanya and its surroundings. Archaeologists had to dismantle the structure into separate parts to bring it to the museum and assemble it on the territory of the museum in accordance with the drawings.
It is impossible to place all the exhibits in the museum building, so some of them are exhibited in the garden. There are ancient clothes, carpets of nomads, ancient weapons, jewellery, original embroidery and many other examples of local culture collected at different times in this region. There is a collection of stone products from the Byzantine, Roman and Islamic periods. Here you can also appreciate the fine examples of local wood carving art, admire the handmade palaces that used to decorate the Turks' dwellings. In the courtyard of the museum, a grape press and other agricultural machinery are recreated.
