Turkey's first contemporary glass museum
Opened in December 2007 by the municipality and Anadolu University, home to one of the country's best-known glass departments.
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A hundred and twenty-five pieces of blown and cold-worked glass fill three rooms inside three restored old Ottoman houses knocked together in the heart of Odunpazarı. This was Turkey's first museum devoted to contemporary glass art, opened on 1 December 2007 by the metropolitan municipality, Anadolu University and the Cam Dostları ('Friends of Glass') group. The logic was simple: the university runs one of the country's best-known glass departments, and the city wanted a window onto what comes out of its furnaces, alongside work by Turkish and foreign artists from Japan, Poland, Latvia and Germany. Do not expect goblets and chandeliers. These are sculptures and abstract compositions that play with transparency and light: forms that recall waves and shells, coloured slabs that shift as you move around them, palm-sized objects shaped hot at the pipe or cut and polished cold. Two rooms hold the permanent collection and a third rotates temporary shows through the year. The municipality counted around 650,000 visitors between opening and early 2024, a striking figure for a place this size. Honesty is due: it is small. Thirty to forty-five minutes covers it even if you linger at every plinth. It does not justify a journey on its own, but it is hard to skip if you are already in Odunpazarı, because the Yılmaz Büyükerşen Wax Museum sits in the same Odunpazarı Houses complex, the City Memory Museum is a short walk away, and the lanes of timber houses and meerschaum (lületaşı) shops surround you. Treat it as a stop on the neighbourhood walk, not the destination. For families: the rooms wrap around a small courtyard over two floors and the route is short, but glass sits on open plinths within a child's reach, so it suits children who can be trusted to look rather than touch, and the stairs between floors make a pushchair a burden. Entry is a token municipal fee, cheaper than the neighbouring wax museum, paid in cash or by card at the door. Closed Mondays; open 10:00 to 17:00 the rest of the week.
Opened in December 2007 by the municipality and Anadolu University, home to one of the country's best-known glass departments.
Hot-blown and cold-worked sculpture by Turkish and foreign artists, with one room for rotating shows.
Painted Ottoman houses, the Wax Museum in the same complex, and meerschaum shops all around.
Şarkiye Mah., Türkmen Hoca Sok. No:28, Odunpazarı
Yılmaz Büyükerşen Wax MuseumSome 229 wax figures by the municipality's count, every one of them sculpted by 1 minute walk4.5
Odunpazarı Modern Museum (OMM)Odunpazarı means 'wood market', and when the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma was a1 minute walk4.1
Eskişehir Meerschaum MuseumA soft white stone that comes out of the ground in high-grade blocks almost nowh4 minutes walk4.3
Odunpazarı Historic DistrictBefore Eskişehir became a city of students, trams and riverside cafés, all of it5 minutes walk4.6
Kurşunlu Mosque and ComplexEskişehir is a city of universities, trams and cafés, and it has strikingly litt5 minutes walk4.8Pick OMM: its timber building alone is worth the trip and the collection is far larger. The glass museum is a 45-minute stop at most, and its real value is its position among the Odunpazarı lanes next to the Wax Museum, so drop in as you pass rather than planning around it.
With care. The exhibits are glass on open plinths at hand height, and the rooms are split over two floors by a staircase, so a pushchair struggles. School-age children enjoy the colours and shapes for a few minutes; for excitable toddlers the wax museum next door is the better bet.