Museum Of Innocence

Museum of Innocence

You have seen Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Grand Bazaar and you find yourself wondering what else there is that you can visit away from the historical peninsula.. ‘Museum of Innocence’ is definitely one of the strong candidate to be your next destination. For those who have even a bit of melancholic in themselves should not miss this museum which is a first of its kind – the first museum on the world that is based on a novel-. 

The museum was featured on the NYTimes blog recently. Here are the words of Orhan Pamuk -the first Nobel prize winner of Turkey in literature- about the museum: “Let us say in the pocket of one of my old coats I find a movie ticket from many years ago. Once I see the ticket, not only do I remember that I saw this movie, but also scenes from this movie, which I think I have entirely forgotten, come back to me. Objects have this power, and I like it.” 

The museum attracted 11.000 visitors in the first three months, although it is located in a quiet non-touristic street of Cukurcuma -up and coming neighborhood where various antique stores are located-.

Some of us build strong ties with objects in our lives or even with objects in others’ lives. Then comes the fascination with antiques. Holly Brubach put it really well: “I came to see the cluttered aisles as a way station for objects crying out to be adopted, and I rescued as many as I could. Sometimes I wonder where they’ve been and who loved them first, but I’ll never know: the clock resets to zero each time someone new acquires them. Pamuk has taken in orphans and enshrined them in a memory palace open to the public, assigning them a past that will never be forgotten.”

Here is the link to the whole article:

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/the-right-stuff-orhan-pamuk/

Make sure you visit the ‘Museum of Innocence’ and go back in time with objects Pamuk has collected over the last decade.