Çankırı Museum

Çankırı's museum began modestly in 1972, when 116 pieces collected in the surrounding area were shown in the lower floor of the People's House. Between 1981 and 2017 it worked from the 100th Year Cultural Centre, until the growing collection outgrew it. In 2017 it moved into the restored Old Government House, built in 1905, which had served as the governorship until 1985 and then as the courthouse until 2012.

The building has three floors with a small belvedere above the basement, rooms opening onto a broad hall. The museum has three departments: Natural History, Archaeology and Ethnography. The Natural History section presents fossils from Çorakyerler, a site in central Çankırı that is invaluable for palaeontology. They date to about 8 million years ago, the Late Miocene, and include herbivores such as giraffes, elephants and rhinoceroses, and the Anatolian saber-toothed cat.

The ground floor arranges artefacts chronologically, with coins from the Archaic period to the Turkish Islamic states, and glass bowls, jugs, perfume bottles, bracelets and beads from Hellenistic and Roman times. The first floor covers everyday life in Ottoman and early Republican times through themes such as the traditional kitchen, weaving, clothing, weapons, medicine and healing, and Mevlevism.