Guide
The building that houses the National Struggle Museum began as a school. It opened in 1893 in the Seyfullah Efendi mansion near the Kurşunlu Mosque, as a civil service preparatory school running five years: three of middle school and two of upper school.
As the number of pupils grew, the foundation of the present neoclassical school building was laid in 1903 and the first floor was finished first. The school was turned into a sultani, an imperial lycée, in 1915, and the second floor was completed in 1916. From its founding it competed with the American school at Talas, which had been set up for Armenians and Greeks. The Balkan war and the First World War brought its numbers down. In 1921 it was merged with the Ankara sultani and made a full boarding lycée of twelve years.
While the war of independence was still going on, the Grand National Assembly decided on 24 July 1921 to move the seat of government to Kayseri, and the school building was made ready for the assembly to meet in. After the victory at Sakarya the plan to move the government to Kayseri was abandoned.
In 1923 the school's name was changed from sultani to lycée. On 14 October 1924, during the tour of the country he made with his wife Latife Hanım, Mustafa Kemal Pasha visited Kayseri and came to the lycée. The ceremony opened with a speech by a pupil of the school, Behçet Kemal, and the performance that followed moved him greatly; as a token of his pleasure he presented the school with an oil painting.
The school was merged with the girls' middle school in the academic year 1935-36. An evening lycée was opened within it in 1959 and closed in 1982. A section weighted towards foreign languages opened in the academic year 1994-95, and in 2005-06 the school became an Anatolian lycée.
Under a protocol between the Kayseri metropolitan municipality and the provincial directorate of national education, the building opened to the public as the National Struggle Museum on 2 May 2016.
