Guide
The Şanlıurfa City Museum is housed in a tower of the old city walls, at the point known as Beykapısı, built during the period of the Crusader county. In the last years of the Ottoman state the office of gatekeeper there was given to the Mahmutoğlu family, and the tower has been known by their name ever since.
One refusal is recorded in it. When the British occupied Urfa on 24 March 1919, the occupation commander, Beddy, wanted to rent the tower; its owner, Mahmudoğlu Mustafa Ağa — the municipal account spells the family name both ways — met the offer with anger and turned it down. The building was then left to itself for a long stretch, until the Şanlıurfa municipality bought it in 2008 and restored it to be used as a city museum.
What it sets out to cover is the whole span of the city from its founding to the present: its history and geography, its archaeology, its faiths and culture, its social, economic and commercial life, transport, health, architecture, sport and administration, together with the people and events that mattered along the way. The municipality holds that what separates it from other museums is the way this is presented, through visual displays and animations alongside the documents and compilations.
There is a model of the city, and holograms giving visual accounts of the prophets who lived in Şanlıurfa. The cases hold documents, berats, books, photographs, hand tools, musical instruments, kitchen implements, traditional clothing and materials belonging to the local crafts, along with farm tools, and there are reconstructions of the plants and animals found around Urfa.
