İzmir Museum of History and Art

Izmir Museum of History and Art is a museum in the city of Izmir, Turkey, that operated in Kültürpark between 2004 and 2025. It presented to its visitors works uncovered in excavations in Izmir and its surroundings in three separate sections: Stone Works Section, Ceramic Works Section and Valuable Works Section. It was visited by more than one hundred thousand visitors each year.

When the exhibition capacity of the Izmir Archaeology Museum became full, the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality renovated the old museum building in Kültürpark and the two adjacent buildings, transferred them to the Ministry of Culture, and opened them to the public in 2004. Because the works from the Izmir Museum of History and Art were moved to the Izmir Culture Art Factory, the museum building was taken back from the ministry in 2025.

Stone works

The works are exhibited in three separate buildings surrounding a large courtyard according to their subject and material. The Stone Works Building, consisting of a ground floor and a mezzanine floor, has a larger area than the other two buildings. In this section, sculptural works from the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods as well as plastic works related to architecture are displayed. Chronological development is observed in the halls. Separate presentations have also been organized for groups of works that are cohesive in terms of subject and findspot. The number of stone works in the forms of mosaics, architectural pieces, inscriptions, statues and reliefs displayed on two floors is 225.

The large courtyard at the entrance welcomes visitors with lions on either side of the philosopher (Homer) statue. On the ground floor, the right hall exhibition first displays Archaic Period stone artifacts. In the "U"-shaped Burial Monuments Hall, there are two Roman sarcophagi with various relief steles from the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. In the small room located in the middle of the hall, three Aphrodite statues are exhibited within a Roman bath decoration. The room connects to the large exhibition hall. In the showcases here are various Roman Period statue heads and figurines uncovered during the excavations of the İzmir Agora. In the left corridor used when moving to the Gladiator section, inscriptions uncovered during the construction of the M1 Basmane Metro Station are displayed.

In the rooms on the mezzanine of the Stone Artifacts Building on the west side of the museum, examples of architectural sculpture are presented, and heads from the Hellenistic and Roman Periods are placed in the corridor. In the Metropolis Hall, various statues, round and rectangular altars uncovered in the Metropolis excavations conducted in Torbalı, İzmir, are exhibited; the large hall is dedicated to the relief panels of the Belevi Tomb Monument, colossal griffins, and urns. In the third mezzanine hall, relief blocks from the Milos Theater and the Temple of Dionysus at Teos are displayed.

Starting from the mezzanine, descending the ramp leads to the Olympic Games Hall. Here, steles of athletes from Smyrna and various inscriptions related to the Olympic Games are exhibited. The last hall of the stone artifacts section is the area where works belonging to the ancient settlement of Smyrna, İzmir, are displayed.

Valuable Works

In the Valuable Works Section on the east side of the museum, valuable stones, gold, silver, bronze coins, fired clay, glass, and metal objects ranging from the Early Bronze Age to the late Ottoman period are displayed. In the Ceramic Works Section, rich ceramic collections from the Prehistoric period to the Byzantine period are presented.

Ceramic works

The Ceramic Works Section hosted by the Ministry of Education Cultural Pavilion consists of a ground floor and a mezzanine floor. While the works are exhibited here, a chronological order has not been followed, and the ceramics have been placed in different showcases according to their places of discovery. On the mezzanine floor of the Ceramic Works Building, a Greek‑model commercial ship widely used in the Aegean Sea, a scale model reduced to one quarter, and the amphorae it carried are exhibited.