The Achilles sarcophagus
A marble sarcophagus from Tarsus carved with the Trojan war in deep relief, the finest single piece in the museum.
Turkey's largest museum complex is not in Istanbul or Ankara but inside an old cotton mill on the west bank of the Seyhan river in Adana. The Milli Mensucat factory, founded around 1907, was once the biggest textile works in the Çukurova plain, and the novelist Orhan Kemal clocked in here before he wrote about its workers. Its cavernous halls were restored and the first phase opened in 2017 as a campus of more than 60,000 square metres; the Archaeology Museum is its heart and main unit, sharing the grounds with the mosaic hall, the City, Agriculture, Industry and Fashion museums, and a later popular-culture wing for cinema, literature, sport and music. The collection runs the whole length of Cilicia's story, Neolithic to Ottoman, but the pieces worth lingering over are few and clear. Hittite reliefs in Anatolian hieroglyphs and a stone storm god standing on his chariot. The marble ‘Achilles sarcophagus' from Tarsus, its sides carved in deep relief with the Trojan war. A garlanded sarcophagus pulled from the drowned city of Augusta beneath the Seyhan reservoir. Then the mosaic hall: hundreds of square metres of restored Roman and Byzantine floors from Misis and Yumurtalık, headed by the ‘Four Seasons' and an ‘Orpheus' taming the beasts with his lyre. Be honest with yourself: nobody travels to Adana for this museum, and Adana is not a tourist city in the usual sense. But if you are here, on business or passing between Mersin and Hatay, it is the best two hours the city has indoors. The building is half the pleasure; the iron columns, tall roofs and huge industrial windows make the Roman statuary look as if it had been dug up on the spot. Labels are in Turkish and English only. For families it works well: the complex is nearly all on one level, pushchairs roll through without trouble, and the sheer space plus the old farm and factory machinery hold small children longer than you would expect; ask at the entrance whether a children's workshop is running that day. Adana's summer is brutal, above 40°C in August, and these air-conditioned halls are a genuine refuge in the early afternoon. The museum sits about two kilometres north-west of the old stone bridge, Taşköprü, in the centre; there is no metro stop at the door, so take a taxi or a city bus from anywhere downtown.
A marble sarcophagus from Tarsus carved with the Trojan war in deep relief, the finest single piece in the museum.
Hundreds of square metres of Roman and Byzantine floors from Misis and Yumurtalık, headed by the Four Seasons and Orpheus.
The late-Ottoman cotton factory halls, iron columns and industrial windows, are half the pleasure; Orhan Kemal once worked here.
Döşeme Mah., Ahmet Cevdet Yağ Bulvarı No. 7, Seyhan, Adana
Do not travel for it; the mosaic museums of Antakya and Gaziantep are clearly superior. But if you are in Adana anyway, it is the best thing the city offers indoors, and two air-conditioned hours with the children in summer heat are real value.
Ninety minutes for the Archaeology Museum and the mosaic hall alone, about two and a half hours if you add the City Museum and the Agriculture and Industry halls. The walking distances inside are long, so wear comfortable shoes.