User:MariyaMartinez/İzmir Museum of History and Art

Izmir History and Art Museum is a museum that was opened in 2004 in Kulturpark in Izmir, Turkey. It offers its visitors the artifacts unearthed during the excavations in İzmir and its surroundings in three separate sections, namely the Stone Works Department, the Ceramic Works Department and the Precious Works Department. It is visited by more than one hundred thousand visitors every year.

After the exhibition capacity of the İzmir Archeology Museum was full, the old museum building in Kültürpark and the two buildings next to it were repaired by the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality and transferred to the Ministry of Culture and opened to visitors in 2004.

Stone artifacts
According to their subject and materials, the works are exhibited in three separate buildings surrounding a large courtyard. The Stone Works Building, consisting of a ground floor and a mezzanine, has a larger area than the other two buildings. In this section, sculpture works belonging to the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods and plastic works related to architecture are exhibited. Chronological development was observed in the halls. In addition, separate presentations were organized for groups of works that contain integrity in terms of subject and place of find. The number of stone works such as mosaics, architectural pieces, inscriptions, sculptures and reliefs on two floors is 225.

The large courtyard at the entrance welcomes the visitors with lions on both sides of the philosopher (Homer) statue. Archaic period stone artifacts are first exhibited in the right hall on the ground floor. In the "U" shaped Burial Monuments Hall, there are various embossed steles from the Hellenistic and Roman Periods and two Roman Sarcophagi. In the small room in the middle of the hall, three Aphrodite statues are exhibited in the decoration of the Roman bath. The room is connected to the large showroom. There are various heads of statues and figurines from the Roman Period unearthed during the Izmir Agora excavations in the showcases here. Inscriptions unearthed during the construction of the Basmane Metro Station of the İzmir metro are exhibited in the left corridor used when passing to the gladiator section.

Architectural sculpture examples are located in the halls on the mezzanine floor of the Stone Works Building, and heads from the Hellenistic and Roman Periods are located in the corridor. Various statues, round and rectangular altars unearthed during the Metropolis excavations in Izmir Torbalı are exhibited in the Metropolis hall; The Great Hall is devoted to the relief panels of the Belevi Grave Monument, colossal griffins and urns. In the third hall of the mezzanine floor, there are embossed blocks belonging to the Miletos Theater and Teos Dionysos Temple.

When you go down the ramp starting from the mezzanine floor, you come to the Olympic Games Hall. Steles belonging to Smyrna athletes and various inscriptions related to the Olympic Games are exhibited here. It is the last hall of the stone artifacts section, where artifacts belonging to Smyrna, the ancient settlement of Izmir, are exhibited.

Precious works
Precious stones, gold, silver, bronze coins, terracotta, glass and metal works from the Early Bronze Age to the end of the Ottoman period are displayed in the Precious Works Section. In the Ceramic Works Department, rich ceramic collections from the Prehistoric period to the Byzantine period;

Ceramic works
Ceramic Works Department consists of ground floor and mezzanine floor. The ceramics, which were not followed in a chronological order while exhibiting the works here, were placed in different showcases according to their finds. On the mezzanine floor of the Ceramic Factory, a Greek model commercial ship, which is widely used in the Aegean Sea, is exhibited together with a quarter-scale model and amphorae it carries.