What to See in Ankara - Top Sights and Attractions

Mausoleum for former Turkish leader. Anıtkabir is the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the leader of the Turkish War of Independence and the founder and the first President of Republic of Turkey. It is located in Ankara and was designed by architects Professor Emin Onat and Assistant Professor Ahmet Orhan Arda, whose proposal beat 48 other entries from several countries in a competition held by the Turkish Government in 1941 for a monument for Atatürk.

The site is also the final resting place of İsmet İnönü, the second President of Turkey, who was interred there after he died in 1973. His tomb faces the Atatürk Mausoleum, on the opposite side of the Ceremonial Ground.

The mausoleum was depicted on various Turkish banknotes during 1966–1987 and 1997–2009 and was included in the Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers list of the fifty civil engineering feats in Turkey, a list of remarkable engineering projects realized in the first 50 years of the chamber.^[1]

Archaeology displays in Ottoman building. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is located on the south side of Ankara Castle in the Atpazarı area in Ankara, Turkey. It consists of the old Ottoman Mahmut Paşa bazaar storage building, and the Kurşunlu Han. Because of Atatürk's desire to establish a Hittite museum, the buildings were bought upon the suggestion of Hamit Zübeyir Koşay, who was then Culture Minister, to the National Education Minister, Saffet Arıkan. After the remodelling and repairs were completed, the building was opened to the public as the Ankara Archaeological Museum.

Today, Kurşunlu Han, used as an administrative building, houses the work rooms, library, conference hall, laboratory and workshop. The old bazaar building houses the exhibits. Within this Ottoman building, the museum has a number of exhibits of Anatolian archeology. They start with the Paleolithic era, and continue chronologically through the Neolithic, Early Bronze, Assyrian trading colonies, Hittite, Phrygian, Urartian, Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuq and Ottoman periods. There is also an extensive collection of artifacts from the excavations at Karain, Çatalhöyük, Hacılar, Canhasan, Beyce Sultan, Alacahöyük, Kültepe, Acemhöyük, Boğazköy (Gordion), Pazarlı, Altıntepe, Adilcevaz and Patnos as well as examples of several periods.

The exhibits of gold, silver, glass, marble and bronze works date back as far as the second half of the first millennium BC. The coin collections, with examples ranging from the first minted money to modern times, represent the museum's rare cultural treasures.

Museum of Anatolian Civilizations reaching the present time with its historical buildings and its deeply rooted history was elected as the first "European Museum of the Year" in Switzerland on April 19, 1997.^[2]

The Çankaya Mansion is the official residence of the vice president of Turkey, and previously the official residence of the president of Turkey from 1923 to 2007.

The property is located in the Çankaya district of Ankara, which lends its name to the palace. The Çankaya Campus is home to several buildings, including the mansion and stretches over 438 acres of land with its unique place in the history of the Turkish Republic. The Çankaya Campus houses Atatürk's Museum Mansion, the Çankaya Mansion, the office of the Chief Aide-de-Camp, the Glass Mansion, State Supervision Council, the Financial Affairs and Preservation Directorate buildings, Press Conference Hall, reception halls, fire department building, social facility, garage, greenhouse, artificial turf sports area, tennis court and employee lodgings.

Since the transition to a presidential system in 2018, the Çankaya Mansion has served as the official residence of the Vice President of Turkey.^[5]

Museum with local art and sculptures. The State Art and Sculpture Museum is a museum dedicated to fine arts and sculpture in Ankara, Turkey. It was designed in 1927 by architect Arif Hikmet Koyunoğlu and built between 1927 and 1930 as the Türkocağı Building, upon the direction of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first President of Turkey. It is located close to the Ethnography Museum and houses a rich collection of Turkish art from the late 19th century to the present day. There are also galleries for guest exhibitions.

The museum was reopened after the restoration of the building in 1980. Today, the museum is a center of art where the most outstanding works of the artists who played important roles in the development of Turkish painting and sculpture are exhibited. In addition to the collections of art works reflecting the formation and development periods of Turkish plastic arts, and its classification, and to the Library of Plastic Arts which fills the gap in this field (enriched every year by the donations of domestic or foreign resources, or by new purchases), the archives of Turkish artists satisfactorily respond to the needs of researchers working in these fields.

The protection of the works of fine arts, which is one of the most important responsibilities of the museum beside training, is done by employing a method particularly developed to ensure the most satisfactory results when dealing with the problems arising from temperature, humidity and sorting difficulties. Any damage due to aging which may occur in spite of all protection measures are restored by experts in the special restoration unit which has been set up as a separate division within the museum.

During the restoration of the building in 1980, and in the following years, another important point on which considerable stress was laid is the construction of workshops of painting, sculpture and ceramics, which serve artists, both amateur and professional. The museum was again restored in 2011 to increase the exhibition spaces, restore the roof as well as other security measures.

As for the security measures, the whole building is furnished with closed-circuit TV, ultrasonic and firealarm systems for controlling all parts of the museum.

In addition to the workshop where painting and traditional printing courses are held (and demanded by the public beyond the capacity of the museum), special workshops for Turkish ornamental arts, ceramic, and sculpture will be opened in the near future.

Exhibitions of painting, sculpture, ceramic, printing arts and photography that are programmed to take place in Turkey within the framework of international cultural agreements, are exhibited in the three galleries reserved for periodical exhibitions; thus, the art works of foreign countries are made known to the Turkish public. In addition, exhibitions of Turkish artworks selected from the permanent collection of the museum are organized in foreign countries, within the framework of international cultural agreements. Besides these exhibitions, retrospective exhibitions organized by the General Directorate of Fine Arts; individual exhibitions and competitive exhibitions are among the other activities of the museum.

In the historical hall which has been transformed to its original design during the restorations, different kinds of activities such as concerts, theatrical performances and movie projections take place.

Serving to public with its modern cafeteria, sales outlet and audio system, the institution goes beyond an exhibition place for old artwork; comprising all attributes of a modern museum of arts.^[22]

Tower in Ankara. Atakule is a 125 m high communications and observation tower located in the Çankaya district of central Ankara, Turkey, and is one of the primary landmarks of the city. As the district of Çankaya is itself on a hill, the tower can be spotted from almost anywhere in the city during clear days. The tower's design came from architect Ragıp Buluç and the construction works lasted from 1987 to 1989. The top section of the tower houses an open terrace and a revolving restaurant named Sevilla, which makes a full 360 degree rotation in one hour. On top of Sevilla is another restaurant, Dome, which is non-revolving and located directly under the cupola. Under the terrace is a café, named UFO. The bottom structures house a shopping mall and several indoor and outdoor restaurants. The tower was opened on 13 October 1989 by President Turgut Özal. Due to the ongoing rebuilding of the shopping mall, the tower is now closed to visitors.

In Turkish, the word ata means "ancestor" (or "father" in Old Turkic), which is often used as a nickname (Ata) for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey; while the Turkish word kule means "tower".^[23]

Zafer Square is a square in Ankara, Turkey. Zafer means "victory". Although it is traditionally called square it is no longer a junction point.

The square is on Atatürk Boulevard at 39°55′29″N 32°51′17″E in Çankaya secondary municipality. It is between Kızılay Square and Sıhhiye Square. An underground bazaar of bookstores is to the east and an officers' club is to the west of the square. At the center of the Atatürk Boulevard there is a statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938), the founder of the Turkish Republic in marshal uniform. The monument was commissioned to Pietro Canonica, an Italian sculptor, who had also created several other monuments in Turkey. It was erected on 4 November 1927. The building material is bronze with a marble base. The height of the base is 2 m (6 ft 7 in) and the height of the statue 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in).^[28]

Building in Ankara, Turkey. Ankara Opera House of the Turkish State Opera and Ballet is the largest of the three venues for opera and ballet in Ankara, Turkey, the other two being Leyla Gencer Sahnesi in Ostim and Operet Sahnesi in Sıhhiye.

The building was originally designed by the Turkish architect Şevki Balmumcu as an exhibition center, who came first in an international competition for the project in 1933. It was later converted into an opera house by the German architect Paul Bonatz, and started serving this function on April 2, 1948.

The same building also serves as a theatre venue for the Turkish State Theatres under the name Büyük Tiyatro. The construction of a new main opera house for Ankara, in the vicinity of the original and of considerably larger capacity, is underway since 2005.^[29]