Museum of Burdur Archaeology

The ancient monuments in Burdur and its environs were formerly collected and conserved in the library building, which is the only remaining building of Bulguroğlu (Pirgulzade) School and thus the first steps towards the constituting of the museum were taken. The opening ceremony of the exhibition halls of Burdur Museum was held in 1969.

Today, Burdur Museum is among the first 10 - 15 museums of our country with its 50.000 monuments. The museum, which is very rich in monuments, is insufficient in terms of place. The museum shall gain a new identity with new exhibition halls to be built in 1998.

Burdur represents the common features of Mediterranean, Aegean and Central Anatolian civilizations in terms of its location. The findings in Burdur Museum are the historical and cultural treasury of a past of 9000 years, since BC 7000 to date.

There are 3 sections in Burdur Archaeology Museum to examine:

1. Garden (Open Exhibition): Statues, steles, various architectural objects, tombs and tombstones, incomplete inscriptions, high embossments, etc. of Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Times are exhibited in the garden of the museum.

2. Statue Hall: Almost all of the monuments exhibited in this hall have been brought from the archaic city of Kremna within the borders of Bucak District of Burdur in the 18th century. These monuments include a Great and Lesser Athena, Hygieia, Leto, Apollo, Nemesis, Dionysos, Aphrodite and woman statues with cloths, all of high artistic value.

3. Small Monuments Hall: The monuments in this hall are arranged in chronological order. Among the monuments exhibited in this hall, there are monuments of Late Neolithic, Early and Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze ages found in excavations carried out in Hacılar - Kuruçay - Höyücek tumuli, earthenware, painted and unpainted vessels of the Iron Age and of Prygian, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods, Goddess figurines, stone and bronze axes and other tools, ornaments, cosmetic material, rhyton vessels, seals and cylindrical stamps representing ownership and legal concepts, oil - lamps and their moulds, metal god figurines, bronze athlete statues, coins, and beautiful statue findings and other small findings dicovered in excavations at the ancient city of Sagalassos, which has been one of the largest archaeological digging sites in our country these last ten years.

When Burdur Museum was built in 1956, it was small; however, it acquired a great number of monuments. As a result of the archaeological excavations (Hacılar, Kuruçay, Höyücek, İncirhan, Bubon and Sagalassos), the number of the movable cultural monuments in the museum reached 52.941 in 1997, with those obtained by confiscation, donation and purchasing. 18.521 of these monuments are archaeological, 29.765 of them are coins and 4.655 of them are ethnographical cultural monuments. It is possible to find the most beautiful exsamples of all ages and periods, starting from the Neolithic Age.