Gaziantep Toy Museum

The Gaziantep Toy Museum opened in April as Turkey's fourth dedicated toy museum, created by the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality through the restoration of a three-story traditional Antep house in the Bey neighbourhood of Şahinbey district. Spread across eight exhibition rooms plus a cave-level gallery unique to this museum, the collection brings together roughly 600 toys dating from the 1700s to the 1990s, most sourced from Germany, the United States, Japan and Turkey, alongside pieces from countries including Argentina, England, France, Iran, China and Azerbaijan. Among the more unusual items on display are an early Laterna Magica projection device, vintage Mickey Mouse, Pinocchio and Snow White figures, traditional Anatolian games and historic dollhouses from the 1700s and 1800s. By pairing a restored piece of local domestic architecture with an internationally sourced collection, the museum lets visitors trace both the social history of childhood and the craftsmanship of toymaking across more than two centuries.