ÇETİN VİLLAGE CULTURE MUSEUM

A place worth seeing during your Selçuk Ephesus holiday is Çetin Village Culture Museum which is located 300 metres away from the Kuşadası roundabout on Pamucak-Seferhisar- Kuşadası road.

Ayhan Cetin and his wife Nazmiye Çetin have founded this museum to preserve the culture of local villages as well as paying homage to their childhood memories. The museum opened its doors in 2000 and the life in a typical 50’s village is depicted here through models, figurines, miniatures, statues and paintings. The museum covers an area of about 300 metresquares. The Çetins are proudly presenting their art on which they had been working on since 1980’s. The figures and the paintings in the scenes belong to Ayhan Çetin whereas the clothes and accessories carry the signature of Nazmiye Çetin. The compositions in the museum reflect the life and culture of typical Western Anatolia villages including the children’s games that are now long forgotten. The conditions on the front lines of the Turkish Independence War, the villages that were wrecked with poverty, people carrying food and ammunition to the soldiers with cart and bulls are also depicted in some of these compositions. Others include figurines of folk dancers from various parts of Turkey like Silifke, Ağrı women, Aegean Women, Aegean zeibeks along with scenes from famous Turkish folk stories of Nasreddin Hodja and depictions of life in the stone ages.

The Çetin Museum consists of 2 parts. As you enter through the gates you find yourself in a typical village where you can see life sized models of wool spinning, carpet weaving women, hammersmiths, blacksmiths, tinsmiths in rooms that are decorated traditionally. Motion and sound effects used in these compositions take visitors to a unique journey in the past.

The second part of the museum consists of a miniature village where scenes of local culture are reflected in and extraordinarily detailed way. Among these scenes are, asking for a girl’s hand to marry, engagement and wedding ceremonies, sending young boys off to military service, shooting bottles, tame bear dance, circumcision ceremony, building a toy cart with wires, herding sheep, plowing fields, harvesting, hunting, milling, tinsmithing, pottery, blacksmithing, winter preparations of women, shearing sheep, milking sheep, carpet and rug weaving, shopping from peddlers, shopping from caravans, mosques, carrying water in pitchers.