Archaeological museum Kahramanmaraş

The Kahramanmaraş Archaeology Museum is an archaeological museum in the Dulkadiroğlu district of Kahramanmaraş, Turkey. It holds approximately 30,000 artifacts in its inventory, spanning a vast chronological range from the Paleolithic era through the Byzantine period and into the Ottoman era. The institution serves as a major cultural and scientific center for the region, organizing its holdings not as a storage facility but as a geographic and temporal map of local history. Its galleries connect visitors directly to the surrounding excavation sites, wetlands, and settlement mounds of the province.

The collecting tradition in Kahramanmaraş traces back to the Medieval Age, when a primitive display of steles existed in the local castle under the Dulkadir Beylik. The formal museum was established in 1947 through the initiative of Colonel H. Nuri Yurdakul. It opened in the Taş Medrese, a 15th-century building, initially focusing on the Turkish War of Independence with portraits of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his comrades. In 1957, the collection expanded to include archaeological and ethnographic objects. Due to space constraints, the museum relocated to a building within the Kahramanmaraş Castle in 1961. It moved again on November 29, 1975, to a newly constructed building on Azerbaycan Boulevard in the Yenişehir Mahallesi neighborhood. During this final move, the ethnographic exhibits were transferred to the separate Maraş Kültür Evi ve Etnografya Müzesi. The building underwent a significant renovation beginning in February 2008, leading to a major redesign and reopening in May 2012. Following the 6 February 2023 earthquakes, the museum was closed for repairs and structural assessment, with an announced reopening date of 19 May 2025.

The museum's holdings encompass material culture from the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze, Iron, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman periods. The collection is particularly strong in artifacts from regional excavations, including the Direkli Cave and the Domuztepe mound. A major focus is the corpus of Late Hittite stone objects from the surrounding area and the Kingdom of Gurgum. The institution also holds a significant collection of Roman mosaics from the ancient city of Germanicia, alongside classical statuary, sarcophagi, grave stelae, milestones, and coins. The exhibitions are distributed across seven specialized halls, a coin display section, and an outdoor garden display complex, supplemented by an education room and a multi-purpose meeting hall.

Among the most prominent exhibits are two elephant skeletons discovered in the Gavur Lake marshland near Türkoğlu, dated to around 1400 BC and identified as the extinct Syrian elephant. The larger specimen was restored over a ten-month period by a team of 15 specialists and raised upright with a custom support system in 2010. The museum also holds a 2.6 cm tall fired-clay Mother Goddess figure from Direkli Cave, dated to approximately 10,730 BC. Late Hittite works are a major highlight, including the Maraş Lion statue from the reign of King Halparuntiya III of Gurgum, a portal lion discovered on the citadel by Carl Humann and Otto Puchstein in 1883, and various stelae depicting the weather god Teššub and funerary banquets. Other key pieces include an Assyrian border stone from Kızkapanlı bearing cuneiform inscriptions about Adad-nirari III and Shalmaneser IV, and vibrant Roman mosaics from Germanicia uncovered during unauthorized digs and rescue excavations.

The current museum building is a modern, fully renovated structure situated at Azerbaycan Boulevard in the Yenişehir Mahallesi neighborhood of the Dulkadiroğlu district. Its geographic coordinates are 37°34′26″N 36°55′34″E. The facility was purpose-built to house the growing archaeological collection, replacing the earlier spaces in the 15th-century Taş Medrese and the Kahramanmaraş Castle. The 2012 renovation introduced a structured visitor flow through seven thematic exhibition halls and integrated landscape elements in the outdoor garden display complex. The building was closed following the 6 February 2023 earthquakes to address structural and display damage caused by the seismic event.

The museum is located at Yenişehir Mahallesi, Azerbaycan Bulvarı, No:35, in the Dulkadiroğlu district of Kahramanmaraş, Turkey. It operates under the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Following its closure after the 6 February 2023 earthquakes, the institution announced a reopening date of 19 May 2025, though visitors are advised to confirm same-day access before traveling. The MüzeKart is accepted for admission by Turkish citizens. The museum provides educational spaces for children and families, and its official contact includes the phone number +90 344 223 44 88 and the email kahramanmarasmuzesi@ktb.gov.tr.