Guide
The PTT Stamp Museum, founded by the Post and Telegraph Organisation, came into service in October 2013 and is held to be the first and only stamp museum in Türkiye. It displays objects and documents on the history of the PTT and on the making, use and collecting of stamps. The collection holds 4,404 original stamps together with 1,500 gathered from countries around the world, about six thousand in all. More than a hundred thousand people visited in 2024.
The building stands in Ulus and was designed by the Austrian architect Clemens Holzmeister, who drew many public buildings of the republican period. It is neoclassical, of five storeys, and was completed in 1934. With 6,500 square metres of usable space, it was occupied in its early years by the Emlak ve Eytam Bank; after standing empty for a long time it was bought by the PTT, restored, and opened as a museum in 2013.
The entrance floor is given to the history of the PTT and shows the uniforms worn in the postal service in different periods; the 3D cinema, the cafeteria and the gift shop are on this floor. The first floor shows Turkish stamp collections beginning with the first stamp, printed at the imperial mint in 1863 and bearing the monogram of Sultan Abdülaziz, with the collections of the Ottoman period, the War of Independence and the republic arranged in chronological order.
