Things to do
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Ankara Castle
The citadel on the hill above Ulus, first fortified by the Phrygians and rebuilt under the Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks and Ottomans, with an inner ring of closely spaced towers enclosing about 350 by 150 metres. A village of timber houses survives inside the walls, and the rampart walk takes in the whole plateau. Copper and spice sellers work the lanes on the climb up from the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.
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Anıtkabir
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's mausoleum on the hill of Rasattepe, completed in 1953 to a design by Emin Onat and Orhan Arda. Visitors enter along the Lion Road, an avenue of stone lions leading to the ceremonial square, where the changing of the guard runs on the hour. The Atatürk and War of Independence Museum is part of the complex, and İsmet İnönü has been buried here since 1973.
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Atatürk Forest Farm and Zoo
The farm Atatürk founded in 1925 and gave to the state in 1937, now parkland with greenhouses, a dairy, a brewery and a zoo of 32 hectares. An exact replica of the house in Thessaloniki where he was born stands in the grounds, and the Merkez Lokantası serves the farm's own beer, ice cream and kebabs grilled over charcoal.
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CerModern
Railway repair workshops built in 1926 and 1927 behind Ankara station, used by the state railways for most of the century, then restored by the architects Semra and Özcan Uygur and opened in 2010 as a contemporary art centre. The tracks are left in the floor, and the halls host exhibitions, conferences, stage performances and festivals through the year.
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Erimtan Archaeology and Arts Museum
A private collection of nearly two thousand Anatolian pieces, from coins and glass to small antiquities spanning 3000 BC to the Byzantine era, shown since 2015 in three restored houses below the castle. It sits between the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations and the Rahmi M. Koç Museum, and on Tuesdays a concert is held in the building, about sixteen a season.
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Gordion
The Phrygian capital where Alexander is said to have cut the knot, with a royal tumulus of about 740 BC whose wooden burial chamber can be walked into and is the oldest standing timber structure in the world. It was listed by UNESCO in 2023.
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Hacı Bayram Mosque
Named for Hacı Bayram Veli, the Sufi poet who founded the Bayrami order, this mosque of 1428 stands beside the Roman temple around his tomb. Parks and tombs surround it, the site joined the UNESCO tentative list in 2016, and it ranks with Kocatepe as one of the two best-known mosques in the city. The metro and city buses both stop close by.
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Museum of Anatolian Civilizations
A restored Ottoman bazaar storehouse on the south side of the castle, holding finds from Çatalhöyük, Kültepe and Gordion arranged in order from the Palaeolithic through the Hittite, Phrygian and Urartian periods to the Ottomans. Its coin collection runs from the first minted money to modern times, and in 1997 it was named the first European Museum of the Year. It is the single best reason to spend a day in Ankara.
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Temple of Augustus and Rome
Built around 25 to 20 BC, the temple carries the Res Gestae, Augustus's own account of his reign, in Latin inside the porch and in Greek on an outer wall of the cella. It is the most complete copy to survive, since the bronze original in Rome is lost. Only the side walls and the carved door frame still stand, hard against the Hacı Bayram Mosque.
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Ulucanlar Prison Museum
Opened as a prison in 1925 and emptied in 2006, when the closed section moved to Sincan, then restored as a museum in 2011 with its cells, wards and the yard where nineteen hangings took place. Journalists, poets and politicians were held here alongside ordinary criminals, and recorded sound of wardens and prisoners plays in the corridors of the isolation block.
