Guide
Miniatürk is İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality's miniature park, built by its culture company Kültür A.S. and opened on 2 May 2003 on the Golden Horn at Sutluce. It holds 138 architectural works reproduced at 1:25 — 62 from İstanbul, 64 from the rest of Anatolia and 13 from the Ottoman lands now outside Türkiye — chosen for how well known they are and how well they represent their period.
The range is deliberately not limited to mosques and palaces. Caravanserais, mosque complexes, medreses, bridges, railway stations, piers, castles, city walls, tombs, mosques, churches, synagogues, palaces, waterside mansions, obelisks, monuments and statues sit alongside natural formations such as Pamukkale and the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia. Two of the models are of buildings that no longer exist: the Temple of Artemis and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, both built in Anatolia and both counted among the seven wonders of the ancient world.
There is an audio guide app — available in Turkish, English, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Persian, Japanese and Spanish — which also shows where in Türkiye each original stands, and there is municipal wifi along the route.
The site runs to 60,000 square metres, of which the models occupy 15,000. The rest holds a 300-space car park, a restaurant, a cafeteria, a gift shop, an open-air performance area and a children's playground, plus the Miniatek activity zone: a ferry, radio-controlled boats, a tour train, a story tree, games at the Mini Stadium, chess and maze areas, an upside-down house and a helicopter simulator over Türkiye and İstanbul. Miniatürk opens daily except Mondays from 10:00 to 18:00; between 26 June and 13 September it stays open until 22:00 on Fridays and Saturdays, with the ticket office closing at 19:00 and the visit ending at 20:00.
