Sıhhiye & Anıttepe

Between Ankara's old town and its modern centre, Sıhhiye is where the young Republic built its cultural institutions — and where the capital keeps its modern and contemporary art. CerModern, the city's leading contemporary art space, occupies a converted railway workshop near the station; a short way off, the State Art and Sculpture Museum and the Ethnography Museum sit side by side in early-Republican buildings. West of them, on the hill of Rasattepe, rises Anıtkabir — the vast mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic, a state monument on its own scale. This is the Republic's own layer of the city: railways, museums, and the tomb of the man who made Ankara the capital.