Orhan Pamuk’s museum gets 11,000 visitors

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The Museum of Innocence, which opened in April, is a visual representation of the love story of the main characters in Orhan Pamuk’s novel with the same name.

Author Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence has received 11,000 visitors since its opening in April, meeting with great interest from locals and tourists.

Since April 2,800 foreign visitors have come to the museum, including tourists from Peru, Argentina, Korea, Hong Kong, Albania, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Romania.

A total of 2,000 people have used the ticket to the museum that is printed in each copy of Pamuk’s novel “The Museum of Innocence.” When visitors arrive at the museum with their books, they showed the ticket page and have it stamped. Those who have not read the book also enjoy the museum, which serves as a city museum of twentieth-century Istanbul.

The museum is a visual representation of the love story of Kemal and Füsun, the main characters in the novel. Light shines down from above, illuminating Füsun’s “belongings,” such as 4,213 cigarettes that Füsun smoked, while each storey of the museum reflects a period in Istanbul’s past. In the attic, visitors find the room in which Kemal wrote his novel over many years. The room contains the manuscript for the novel, and, like each room of the museum, was designed by Pamuk.

Object collection before writing the novel

Pamuk began collecting objects in the museum space before writing the novel, and continued to collect while writing “Museum of Innocence.” After the novel was complete, Pamuk added many objects to the museum, as well as voice installations that guide the visitor through the museum.

Pamuk worked with architects İhsan Bilgin, Cem Yücel and Gregor Sunder Plassmann on the design of the museum, which is located at 24 Çukurcuma Street in Cihangir.