Unfortunately the difference between what a local pays to visit Turkey’s attractions and what a visitor does has been dramatically widened in recent years. There is also a big difference between the cost of visiting the small local museums and the big blockbuster museums and archaeological sites in the main tourist areas. Entry to the latter is often quite steep – a tour of the main sites of Sultanahmet in İstanbul, for example, would set a foreign visitor back more than TL2000 per person (summer 2024) whereas a visit to the local museum in Kayeri might cost only €4. Admission fees usually rise every January.
Although prices are listed in euros you can usually pay in lira at the relevant day’s conversion rate as decreed by the attraction.
Museum passes
To minimise your costs you could consider buying an İstanbul Museum Pass. Unless you want to do a lot of sightseeing in a short space of time the financial gain may be negligible – but you will be saved from having to stand in very long queues to buy individual tickets (although you can usually buy tickets online anyway).
In 2024 you need to do the maths especially carefully since many of the attractions supposedly covered by the Museum Pass are closed for restoration while the admission fee for Topkapı Palace now includes admission to the Harem and Hagia Eirene. By my calculation of the 13 attractions supposedly covered by the card only Topkapı Palace, the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts and the Archaeological Museum of the big attractions are actually open at the moment. The Adam Mickiewicz Museum and the Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam don’t charge for admission anyway!
If you’re heading for Cappadocia you might want to think about buying a three-day Cappadocia Museumpass (€65) bearing in mind the same caveat as for the İstanbul version. Combined tickets are also available for the attractions in Selçuk and Ephesus (€65); for Troy and Assos (€38); for Pamukkale and Laodikeia (€40); and for Şanlıurfa and Göbeklitepe (€21). You can also save €1 by buying a combined entrance ticket to the Ankara Ethnography and Painting and Sculpture Museums. Most of the cards are only valid for a limited number of days from when you first use them.
There is also a Turkey Museum Pass which covers as many of the museums and archaeological sites as you can squeeze in in 15 days. It covers a whoppng €165 though so you’ll still need to consider carefully whether it will save you any money.
