Model of the Zeus Altar
A scale model showing the size of the altar that went to Berlin, with the fragments that stayed behind around it.
Klaus-Peter Simon — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0
The most famous thing ever dug out of Bergama is not here. The great Altar of Zeus went to Berlin, crate by crate, in the 1870s and 1880s, and the town kept the leftovers. Bergama Museum is those leftovers, and they are better than the word suggests. Built between 1933 and 1936 as a Turkish-German joint effort on the site of an old cemetery, it opened on 30 October 1936 as one of the first buildings in the Turkish Republic designed from the ground up to be a museum, a distinction the townspeople prize rather more than the visitors do. Inside it is small and legible: one archaeological hall, one ethnographic hall, and an open courtyard between the columns. The archaeological side holds statues from the Pergamene school of sculpture, which in its day rivalled Athens and Alexandria, a Hadrian from the Asklepion, surgical instruments of the kind used in that same ancient hospital, a Medusa mosaic, and a graceful set of the Myrina terracotta figurines that rank among the finest of their kind anywhere. In the middle sits a scale model of the Zeus Altar, which tells you exactly how much the town lost. The ethnographic hall shows the Bergama carpets that were exported to Europe for centuries, Yağcıbedir rugs and the costumes of the Yörük, Türkmen and Çepni tribes, and it is probably the room a family lingers in longest. Getting here from İzmir is a full day out: about 105 km north on the İzmir-Çanakkale road, an hour and a half to two hours by car, or two hours on the regular Bergama buses from İzmir's main bus station. Nobody makes that journey for the museum alone. Treat it as the cool, shaded middle stop between the acropolis in the morning and the Asklepion in the afternoon, which in August, when the hilltop turns into an oven, is exactly the right role for it. It sits in the town centre on Cumhuriyet Street, is a single storey with barely a step in it, so pushchairs manage without fuss, and an unhurried hour covers everything.
A scale model showing the size of the altar that went to Berlin, with the fragments that stayed behind around it.
Small fired-clay figurines with lively faces and drapery, among the finest work of the Hellenistic workshops.
Bergama carpets, Yağcıbedir rugs and Yörük and Türkmen dress, the room families linger in longest.
Zafer Mah., Cumhuriyet Cad. No:10, Bergama
No. The original has been in Berlin since the 1880s, in the Pergamonmuseum, whose altar hall has been closed for renovation since 2014 with reopening not expected before 2027. Here you get a scale model and a few pieces that stayed, and the empty foundation platform up on the acropolis. If the altar is your goal, that is a future Berlin trip; if you are already in Bergama, the museum completes the picture in an hour.
Acropolis first, no argument, then the Asklepion. The museum comes third, but it costs you an hour and 3 EUR, sits in the town centre on the way between the two, and its halls are cool and shaded. In August you will thank it as a break from the heat more than as a museum. If time is genuinely tight, skip it; you will not lose anything worth regretting.
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