The Military Museum

A Janissary foot soldier in mail with shield

Unfortunately it was really hard to take picures of the swords in thier display cases. This one was at least
6 ft long.

By now, nearing my second month in Istanbul, I feel as though I have seen pretty much all of the really interesting things one can see without having a special guide. I have not really checked out some of the Palaces, but I am waiting for Sirin to become less busy for that. This being the case I had quietly resolved that I was going to focus less on seeing things and more on being here. Yet there was one more notable place that I had not yet seen, and of which I had heard relatively little.

These are mostly French from the Napoleon era. I was surprised how Roman and Greek they looked.

INTIMIDATING!

The military Museum is only a couple blocks away from one of the classes I teach in a private company’s office, so I thought that it would take virtually no effort to come to work a little early and check it out for a while. Was I surprised! It was one of the most impressive things I have seen so far. The Museum is huge and filled with thousands of antique armaments from the last five centuries, most of which are in pristine condition. Many of the items I had never even imagined to have existed: 6 foot broad swords, pistols inlaid with gold, helmets from all over Europe, massive and ornate muskets, full body chain mail, etc.

Mehter

I also had a chance to see the oldest military band called Mehter perform a set of traditional Ottoman military music. It was the perfect thing for me and my growing love of military music. Of course I bought a CD.

Some Bizzare looking muskets- like many of the fire arms in the museum they looked far to ornate to fire.

A collection of European helmets dating back to the 15th century.

Overall it was an extremely fortuitous discover, one in which the child like imagination of the former glory of knights and swordplay blazed to the surface of my mind. Because I spent so much time trying to take picture and videos I did not have time to really see everything before they kicked me out, so I am planning on going back next Wednesday to feed my imagination once again.