Ankara Ataturk's Residence Museum Pavilion |
Page 2 of 2 When you enter to this room, you will have a feeling covering your consciousness that you are in the presence of Atatürk. Some photographs on the walls with nacre-work frames and the photograph on the study desk virtually will draw the person towards them. On the photograph you will read this handwritten note: “21 September 1935 - From Istanbul to Ankara, in the railway car”.The Green Room that is across the Envoy Reception Room, with its lounge room suits, glass cabinet and photographs, is the reception and lounge room. It also has an opening to the dining room. The dinners given by Atatürk in Cankaya are very well known. When you enter to the dining room you may feel yourself like an early arrived guest. The first thing that will catch the eye in that room with the furniture unique of its time is the fireplace right across the door opening to the hall with engraved woodwork covering both sides and the chimney and the windows with stained glass at both sides of the fireplace. There is also a breakfast table for four, and a poker table near by the entrance of the Green Room. Two glass cabinets, a sideboard, a console table, two phonographs and two large earthenware vases are placed harmoniously within the room and around the fireplace. The sets placed in the glass cabinets and in the sideboard are just like ready for use. In the middle of the room right in front of the settee a large silver brazier gives a different image to the room. In the hall, above the Dining Room door, a painting of Hüseyin Avni Lifis dated 1922 and above the Green Room door, the “Crying Woman” painting of the same painter signed with arabic letters, will suddenly catch your eyes. The dirge sang to martyr, whose belongings are the only things returned from the front, will reverberate in your ears. When you exit from the dining room, the stairs just at the right Side of the door will take you to the private moments of Atatürk’s life. On the top floor there are six doors opening to the hall. One is the door that enters to the hall from the stairs. The one at the left, the bedroom door; the one at the right is the rest room door; the door looking towards the front is the balcony door and the one right across is the library door. An oval table (where the pool table was before), a couch, two armchairs and two glass cabinets are placed in the middle of the hall. There is a big brazier placed in front of the balcony door. In one of the cabinets the medals of Atatürk and the National Assembly membership certificate; in the other the first sets of Atatürk postage stamps are displayed. The rest room, which also has a door opening to the stair hall, is a small modest bedroom for a single person. A divan, an armchair, a small desk, a wardrobe and two hassocks are in the room. A wall clock, a painting and photographs of Atatürk and Fethi Okyar, decorates this room. It is rumoured that Atatürk loved this room very much. Both doors across the rest room open to the library. When you enter to the library from the right, you can almost feel that Atatürk is sitting on the study desk. Perhaps, Atatürk has formed most of his ideas while sitting on this desk. He started to write the “The Great Speech” in this library. The books in the library are the important evidences of how Atatürk has broadened his horizon and formed his cultural structure. It is possible to see how he had taken notes in the pages, and underlined some sentences. You can pass to the tower room from the rear end of the library, where a section furnished like part of the library with some more bookshelves, a round table with four chairs and an armchair in the corner with a floor lamp and this section also has a door opening to the bedroom. In the tower room, which the dark colours dominate, again a study desk, armchairs and a bear hide, a present of Muhtar Bey, the Ambassador for Moscow, can be seen. Now your steps convoy you to the last section, the most private space of a man; the bedroom. The bedroom also, as any other sections of the pavilion, is decorated simply and with a good taste. The bed of Atatürk is kept with his pillow, quilt and bedspread as it was on those days. His slippers at the side of the bed give a feeling that the owner will just come in to the room and wear them. One of the two dressing tables is placed next to the bathroom. The toilet articles on the dressing table are known that they belong to his wife Latife Hanim. The only evidences of Latife Hanim in the pavilion, during Atatürk's marriage to her between the dates 9 January 1923 and 5 August 1925, are these toilet articles. In the bedroom besides a wardrobe, an armchair and a small round table with chairs, the youth photograph of Zübeyde Hanim hanged on the fireplace attract attention. The bathroom was made of the best material available in those days. Besides the inlaid bathtub a door opens to a stair hall. Your tour within the residence of Atatürk ends with the bathroom. When you go down from the stairs and go out of the pavilion, your eyes will meet what Atatürk calls “my greatest work” with the modern Capital of the Republic, Ankara. Address: Presidential Palace Garden, Cankaya, Ankara Telephone: +90 (312) 427 43 30 ext. 317
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