ISTANBUL (AA) - The restoration work on the Istanbul Naval Museum, Turkey's biggest naval museum, has completed and the museum will reopen on Thursday.
The oldest galleys and reign boats from Ottoman maritime will be presented to visitors at the museum whose collection contains 20,000 works.
The most splendid of the boats are the caiques (kayık) which belonged to the sultans.
The Maritime Museum was established in 1897 as the first naval museum Turkey, but was rather like a depot opened to the public. The museum became today’s Maritime Museum in 1914.
During World War II, the collection had been taken to Anatolia for safekeeping. When the collection was returned in 1946, the Dolmabahce Palace complex was considered the most appropriate place.
Opening the museum for visitors took two years. The museum then had to be moved because of the need to widen the streets along the shore in Besiktas. Today it is located next to the mausoleum and monument of Ottoman Admiral Barbaros Hizir Hayrettin Pasa.
The museum has two floors of exhibition space and an annex in the rear that houses the boat collection.
It is divided into sections devoted to Weapons and Shipyards, the Crimean War, the Mahmudiye Kalyonu, the Ataturk salon, victims of ship accidents, historical kayaks, and the garden in which cannons, grave markers and torpedoes are found.
There are also numerous paintings related to Ottoman and Turkish ships hung on the walls of the museum.
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