UNESCO-listed Anatolian town gets contemporary museum

“The Odunpazari Modern Museum in Eskisehir will be like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao." This is the hope and goal of the architect Erol Tabanca, chairman of the construction group Polimeks, who became an avid — and eclectic — art collector in the 1990s.  

Tabanca used to show his private collection — of more than 600 works that ranges from paintings to video art — to friends and visitors at his house and office. The collection is eclectic, with examples of  the main currents of Turkish art from the 1950s to the 21st century. “When it became too large, instead of looking for bigger rooms or storage space I decided to build a museum," he told Al-Monitor. The Odunpazari Modern Museum opens to the public Sept. 8.

It stands in Odunpazari, a traditional Ottoman neighborhood with timber houses dating from the 19th century on a slope in Eskisehir, a large town in Anatolia midway between Istanbul and Ankara. It is already famous in Turkey for its universities, museums and cultural projects. This is where Tabanca was born and raised.

The Odunpazari Historical Urban Site has been on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative List since 2012. The universal value of its candidature is focused mainly on two assets. The first is the preservation of the social and cultural texture of the urban environment. Some of the residential family houses, or konaks, have been restored, painted in dashing colors and reused as cafes or cultural spaces.