Guide
The Ege University Ethnography Museum occupies a building known as the Sirkehane, put up between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Who built it and who owned it has never been established: the museum states plainly that no information could be obtained despite every effort.
The building passed to the Treasury in 1943. In the 1960s its rear section was used by the university's Food and Fermentation Technology department for making vinegar and pickles, while the front served as staff housing. In 1990 the Sirkehane passed to Ege University by exchange, and it went on being lived in until the 1990s. Much of it had been demolished over the following twenty years; renovation was completed on 22 June 2010 and it opened as the E.Ü. Museum of Balkan and Anatolian Dress. After application to the Ministry of Culture, approval to operate as a private museum under ministerial supervision was granted on 2 November 2010 and it took its present name.
The displays are staged rather than shelved. In the wedding house section, the wedding customs of the 19th century — the henna night, the trousseau display, the preparation of the wedding meal and the writing of the trousseau list — are recreated in the setting of a traditional İzmir house. To keep traditional trades in living memory, woodworking, shoemaking, coppersmithing and tailoring are also recreated in the museum.
