Guide
This museum is built into a burial ground, not beside one. The Şehitler Abidesi — the martyrs' monument in Bey Mahallesi, raised decades earlier by the municipality of the day with money collected from the townspeople — was restored and the site enlarged to hold it, so the visit is to the memorial and the museum at once.
What it commemorates is the siege the city calls the Antep Defence, the local resistance of the War of Independence, and the 6,317 people who died in it, whose memory the museum exists to keep. It was opened by Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality on 25 December 2023, the 102nd anniversary of the fighting.
The displays are not only of the siege. Finds from the archaeological excavation carried out at Çınarlı Meydanı in 2021 by the archaeology department of Gaziantep University are shown here as well.
