The Italian-designed Kostaki Mansion (1913), built for a Russian merchant and mixing elements of rococo, art nouveau and neoclassical architecture, briefly hosted Atatürk in 1924 and again in 1937. One of the most beautiful museums in provincial Turkey, the ornate rooms, with painted ceilings, carved wooden doors and original furnishings, display reasonably interesting ethnographic and Ottoman artefacts, mostly labelled in English.
The basement archaeological section has more significant pieces, including a flattened bronze statue of Hermes unearthed at Tabakhane in 1997 as well as beautiful wooden Byzantine icons dating from the 5th to 15th centuries.
