Ordu Museum (Paşaoğlu Mansion Ethnography Museum)

The Ordu Museum experience unfolds across two buildings in the city centre. The site visitors actually tour today is the Paşaoğlu Mansion Ethnography Museum, standing on the corner where Taşocak Street meets Erkoçak Street in the Selimiye quarter.

History & Restoration

The mansion was built in 1896 by Paşaoğlu Hüseyin Efendi, a notable of Georgian origin whose family migrated from Batumi after the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War. Its stone was shipped from Ünye and its timber and roof tiles from Romania, and it was raised by a master craftsman from Istanbul. Expropriated by the Ministry of Culture in 1982, the three-storey house reopened after four years of restoration on 18 November 1987.

Collection

The ground floor holds administrative offices, the first floor displays ethnographic works, and the top floor recreates 19th-century Black Sea mansion life through period rooms — the sofa hall, the Pasha's grandmother's room, the daily room, guest room and bedroom — furnished with costumed mannequins. The collection numbers well over a thousand ethnographic pieces alongside coins, manuscripts and archaeological finds, including small Hellenistic objects recovered from the Kurul Castle excavations. The city's headline treasure, the roughly 2,100-year-old marble statue of the mother goddess Kybele found at Kurul Castle in 2016, has long been kept in an Istanbul laboratory for want of a proper archaeology museum. It will return to Ordu once the new Archaeology and Ethnography Museum — created inside the former Governor's Office building and targeted for completion by the end of 2026 — opens with the wider Kurul assemblage.

Visiting, Access & Tips

Agencies favour the museum because it is a compact, weather-proof culture stop easily paired the same day with the Boztepe cable car and a coastal walk. The typical visit runs 45-60 minutes and usually sits in the morning of a guided itinerary. Photographers prize the bay-windowed timber façade, carved ceiling roses and period rooms. Access is easy, within walking distance of the promenade and central car parks, though the narrow lane means coaches drop passengers at a nearby square. As a historic house it is stair-based, so disabled access to the upper floors is limited.

Best Time & Route

It is best visited between May and October; summer and the weeks after the hazelnut harvest are busiest. Suggested route: the museum in the morning, then the Boztepe cable car, and an evening stroll along the seafront.