Odunpazarı's Museum Row: Wax Sculptures, Contemporary Glass and Archaeological Museums

Right alongside OMM on Atatürk Bulvarı and inside the first cobblestone lanes of Odunpazarı sits a dense cluster of five municipal and national museums. You can walk between all of them in under five minutes (remembering that all close on Mondays).

1. The Yılmaz Büyükerşen Wax Sculptures Museum (Balmumu Heykeller Müzesi)

Before serving for twenty-five years as the visionary mayor of Eskişehir (and earlier as Rector of Anadolu University), Prof. Dr. Yılmaz Büyükerşen was a celebrated sculptor. In 2013, he donated more than 200 hyper-realistic life-size wax sculptures crafted by his own hand to create Turkey's answer to Madame Tussauds (with all ticket proceeds funding scholarships for female students and the education of children with disabilities): walk through chronological halls featuring Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at every stage of his life, Ottoman Sultans from Osman Gazi to Mehmed the Conqueror, world leaders, scientists, and Turkish cinema, theatre and literary legends.

2. The Museum of Contemporary Glass Art (Çağdaş Cam Sanatları Müzesi) & City Memory Museum

Two doors up inside a trio of interconnected historic Odunpazarı houses stands Turkey's first museum of contemporary glass art, displaying 125 luminous blown, fused and cold-worked glass sculptures by 60 Turkish, Japanese, Polish and German glass masters. One ticket also admits you to the upstairs Eskişehir City Memory Museum (Kent Belleği Müzesi), an interactive digital oral-history archive, and the neighboring Museum of Wood Works (Ahşap Eserler Galerisi).

3. The ETİ Archaeology Museum (10 Minutes' Walk West down Atatürk Bulvarı)

Sponsored by Eskişehir's famous biscuit company ETİ and opened in 2011 inside a sleek neoclassical-modern building on Atatürk Bulvarı (reached directly on the Estram tram at Atatürk Lisesi / Vişnelik; Museum Pass Turkey is valid), this state museum is essential before visiting the Phrygian Valley. Inspect the 5,000-year-old Early Bronze Age marble "Violin Idols" from Küllüoba (where archaeologists in 2024 also discovered 5,000-year-old fermented leavened bread), Hittite cuneiform seals from Dorylaeum (Şarhöyük), golden Phrygian fibulae pins and Roman marble sarcophagi from Pessinus.