The capital of Türkiye — a planned modern city built around an ancient citadel, home to Anıtkabir and one of the country's finest museums.
Last reviewed on 3 June 2026.
Ankara is the capital of Türkiye and its second-largest city, sitting on the central Anatolian plateau a little under 1,000 metres above sea level. It became the capital in 1923, when the new republic deliberately moved the seat of government inland from Istanbul to a defensible, centrally placed town that carried none of the imperial baggage of the old Ottoman capital. That decision shaped everything about the place: Ankara is, above all, an administrative city — ministries, embassies, the Grand National Assembly — and a university city, with a large student population and the unhurried, slightly serious atmosphere of a working capital rather than a tourist destination.
Most foreign visitors skip it, treating it as a transit point on the way to Cappadocia or the coast. That is a reasonable reading of the queue of things Türkiye offers, but it undersells Ankara. The city is also genuinely old: the settlement of Ankyra was a Phrygian, then Galatian, then Roman town long before the republic existed, and the hill at its centre has been continuously occupied for thousands of years. What Ankara holds — the mausoleum of Atatürk, a world-class archaeological museum, a still-lived-in citadel — rewards a day or two for anyone with an interest in how modern Türkiye came to be.
Anıtkabir is the monumental mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the republic, and it is the single most important site in the city. It occupies a hill of its own in the Anıttepe district and was completed in the 1950s, well after Atatürk's death in 1938. The scale and the deliberate restraint of the design make it less a tomb than a national statement.
The approach is the point. Visitors arrive along the Lion Road, a long ceremonial avenue lined with stone Hittite-style lions, which opens onto a vast paved court flanked by colonnaded halls. At the far end stands the mausoleum itself, austere and rectangular, with Atatürk's sarcophagus in the hall above and his actual tomb in the chamber below. Beneath the court, a large museum traces the War of Independence and the early republic through dioramas, personal effects, and the documents of the period.
Allow more time than you expect. The walk in, the hall, and the museum below together take a couple of hours if you do not rush, and rushing here misses the whole effect.
The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi) is, by common agreement, one of the best museums in the country and a strong reason to come to Ankara on its own. It is housed in a restored Ottoman bedesten — a covered market hall — at the foot of the citadel, and the building itself, with its domed bays of warm stone, is part of the pleasure.
The collection runs chronologically through the cultures of Anatolia: Neolithic finds from Çatalhöyük, including the famous seated mother-goddess figure; Hittite reliefs and the orthostats that once lined palace walls; Phrygian objects from Gordion; and Urartian bronzes and inscriptions from the eastern highlands. Few places gather so much of Anatolia's deep past under one roof, presented clearly and without clutter.
The museum pairs naturally with travel elsewhere. Seeing the Hittite material here first makes a visit to the ruined capital at Hattusa far more legible, and the Phrygian rooms do the same for the mound at Gordion. Equally, it works as the intellectual counterpart to Cappadocia — the objects in the cases come from the same broad landscape you will be walking through.
Above the museum rises the Hisar, the old citadel, on a steep outcrop that has been fortified since antiquity. The walls you see are largely Byzantine and later, repaired many times, and the interior is not a museum but a living quarter: narrow lanes, old timber-framed Ankara houses in various states of repair, small workshops, and cafés that have opened in restored buildings. From the upper ramparts the view stretches over the whole grid of the modern city below.
The streets around the citadel make up the oldest part of Ankara, in the Ulus district. Close by stand the Hacı Bayram Mosque — an important centre of devotion built beside the tomb of the 15th-century mystic Hacı Bayram-ı Veli — and, abutting it, the Temple of Augustus, a Roman temple whose walls still carry the inscription known as the Res Gestae, the deeds of the emperor Augustus. Scattered nearby are other Roman remains: the columns of a bath complex and fragments of the ancient street plan. Ulus is also where the early republic first took shape, and several of its founding buildings stand here.
Beyond Ulus, Ankara is a planned twentieth-century capital, laid out on a broad grid as the young republic built itself a seat of government from a small provincial town. The commercial and social heart is Kızılay, a busy square and the surrounding streets of shops, bookshops, cafés and government offices — the place where the everyday life of the city is most visible. The grand boulevard of Atatürk Bulvarı runs the spine of the city through it.
The largest landmark of the modern city is Kocatepe Mosque, a very large Ottoman-revival mosque completed in the 1980s, whose four minarets are visible from much of central Ankara. South of the centre, the leafy diplomatic district of Çankaya holds the embassies and the presidential complex, on rising ground that catches cooler air. For green space, Gençlik Parkı near the railway station is the classic city park — a place for families and an evening stroll — and the city keeps a number of other parks that matter more to residents than to visitors. The overall impression is of an ordinary, functioning Turkish city going about its business, which is part of what makes it a useful corrective to the postcard version of the country.
Ankara is the natural base for some of the most important archaeological sites in Türkiye, several of them on the UNESCO World Heritage list. A car helps for all of them, as public transport is limited and slow.
The capital of the Hittite Empire near Boğazkale, around three hours east. Vast walls, the Lion Gate, and the open-air rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya with its carved processions of gods. UNESCO-listed.
The Phrygian capital west of Ankara, associated with King Midas. The great burial mound (tumulus) and the Gordion museum. UNESCO-listed and an easy half-day.
Tuz Gölü, the great salt lake, on the road south towards Cappadocia. In summer a vast white salt pan; one of the largest salt lakes anywhere and a striking, flat landscape.
A restored Ottoman town an hour or so north-west, known for its old timber houses, silverwork and local foods — a calm contrast to the capital.
If you have come to Ankara for the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, pairing it with Hattusa over two days makes the most coherent trip: the museum supplies the objects, and the site supplies the scale.
Ankara has a continental climate, harsher than the coast and noticeably drier than Istanbul. Winters are cold and often snowy, with temperatures frequently around or below freezing and grey skies; summers are hot and very dry, with strong sun on the treeless plateau. The shoulder seasons are by far the most comfortable: spring, roughly April to early June, and autumn, September into October, bring mild days and clear light, which suits both the open spaces of Anıtkabir and the day trips to exposed archaeological sites. Because Ankara is primarily a working city rather than a holiday destination, the seasons affect comfort more than crowds.
Esenboğa Airport (ESB) lies north of the city and handles domestic flights and a growing range of international routes; airport buses and taxis connect it to the centre. For travel within Türkiye, though, the train is often the better choice from Ankara.
Within the city, Ankara has a metro network and the older Ankaray light-rail line, which together cover the main central axes including Kızılay. A single contactless travel card, the Ankarakart, is used across the metro, Ankaray and city buses; you load credit onto it and tap on entry. For the citadel and Ulus, the metro gets you close and the rest is a short walk uphill. Taxis are plentiful and metered.
Yes, though with realistic expectations. Ankara is a working administrative and university capital rather than a holiday city, so it lacks the immediate spectacle of Istanbul or the coast. But Anıtkabir and the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations are both genuinely first-rate, the old citadel quarter is atmospheric, and the city is the best base for visiting Hattusa and Gordion. A day or two is well spent.
When the republic was founded in 1923, the government was deliberately moved inland to Ankara. The town was centrally placed on the Anatolian plateau, far easier to defend than coastal Istanbul, and it carried none of the imperial associations of the old Ottoman capital. Ankara had also been the base of the national movement during the War of Independence, which made it the natural seat for the new state.
One full day covers the essentials: Anıtkabir in the morning, the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations and the citadel in the afternoon. A second day lets you take a day trip to Hattusa or Gordion, which is the main reason to extend your stay. Few visitors need more than two days in the city itself.
Cappadocia lies south-east of Ankara, and the drive takes roughly four hours by road, passing Lake Tuz on the way. There is no high-speed rail link to Cappadocia; most travellers drive, take an intercity bus, or fly into the regional airports at Nevşehir or Kayseri. Many itineraries combine the two by basing in Ankara first and then continuing south.
Spring (April to early June) and autumn (September to October) are the most comfortable, with mild days and clear light that suit both the open expanse of Anıtkabir and the exposed archaeological sites nearby. Winters on the plateau are cold and often snowy, and summers are hot and very dry, so the shoulder seasons are the easy choice.