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The citadel, the copper lanes and the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations

Hittites in a fifteenth-century bedesten, coppersmiths on the hill below, and the whole city from a Byzantine wall — Ankara's oldest corner in one afternoon.

Free-ishhalf a dayafternoon — museum first, then the walls for sunset

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Why do it?

Long before it was a capital, Ankara was this rock. The citadel walls are Byzantine on Roman foundations, and inside them a village of timber houses still lives its own life — cats, laundry, a mosque older than the republic. On the southeast slope below, two Ottoman market buildings, the Mahmut Paşa bedesteni and the Kurşunlu Han, hold the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations: the world's best Hittite collection, the Çatalhöyük finds, Phrygian furniture from Gordion, ten thousand years of Anatolia in two rooms. Across the lane, Çengelhan (1520s) is the Rahmi M. Koç industrial museum. Between the gate and Ulus run the old trade lanes — Atpazarı, Çıkrıkçılar Yokuşu and the Bakırcılar coppersmiths' market — where you can still hear hammers on metal. The municipality's inner-castle restoration finished its main phases in 2025, so the lanes are in the best shape they have been in decades.

The Smileys Take

Start with the museum and give it two hours — it is small enough not to exhaust you and good enough to change how you see every field you drive past afterwards. Then climb through the inner castle to the eastern tower and stay for the light: Ankara is a bowl of hills and this is the rim. Come down the copper lanes rather than the road, and stop for tea at the foot. The museum keeps standard state-museum hours (last tickets mid-afternoon in winter) and closes on religious holidays; Çengelhan closes on Mondays. Both are ticketed; the castle and the lanes are free. It's a walk we do with every newcomer, and one we repeat every time a friend visits.

Don't miss

The Hittite hall — the reliefs from Alacahöyük and Carchemish, and the Kültepe tablets.
The Çatalhöyük room — the wall painting that may be the world's oldest map.
Çengelhan Rahmi M. Koç Museum — old cars, radios and a working pharmacy; a good rainy-day pairing.
The Bakırcılar (coppersmiths) lane and Çıkrıkçılar Yokuşu — buy a cezve from the man who made it.
Sunset from the inner-castle walls; the safest way up is via the main gate and the marked steps.