Istanbul Toy Museum

The poet and writer Sunay Akın spent decades buying toys in flea markets and auctions around the world, and on 23 April 2005, Children's Day in Turkey, he opened them in a wooden köşk in Göztepe on the Asian side; some 4,000 toys and miniatures are on show, and in 2012 the museum was shortlisted for the European Museum Academy's children's museum award. The collection runs from the early nineteenth century onward - French bisque dolls, German tin trains, American space toys, marbles, teddy bears, model theatres, a violin-playing automaton - arranged not by date but by theme, so rooms are given over to a train station, a space gallery, an underwater room, a doll's house floor, with lighting and staging that lean deliberately theatrical. Akın's own commentary runs through the labels, and the museum's argument, made explicitly, is that toys carry the history of the century they were made in. It is aimed at adults at least as much as children. The house has a garden and a café, and the Asian-side setting makes it an easy pairing with Kadıköy.

What to look for

• The themed rooms - train station, space gallery, underwater room.
• The antique dolls - French and German pieces from the 1800s.
• The tin and clockwork toys - trains, automata and mechanicals.
• The wooden köşk - the mansion the collection lives in.

When to go

Year-round; it is indoors and works in bad weather. Closed on Mondays. Weekday mornings are quiet - weekends fill with families.

Good to know

It is on the Asian side, a fair way from the tourist centre. Rooms are small and dimly lit for effect, and it gets crowded quickly. Labels are largely in Turkish with partial English.

Nearby

Kadıköy and Moda are a short ride west; Bağdat Caddesi runs through Göztepe.

Key facts