Çeşme Museum

Çeşme Castle stands beside the sea at the tip of the Karaburun-Çeşme peninsula, and it is one of western Anatolia's important surviving castles. Traces suggest that Genoese traders first built it in the 15th century to protect sea trade. Sultan Bayezid II enlarged and repaired it in 1508 and 1509, turning it into an Ottoman fortress, and the walls show both Genoese and Ottoman styles side by side.

The castle is rectangular, on a rocky slope with the sea on its west and a moat on the other three sides; the main gate is on the south face. It was used until the 19th century and then abandoned. In 1965 weapons brought from Istanbul's Topkapı Palace Museum were displayed here, and the castle opened as a weapons museum. A rearrangement in 1984 made it the Çeşme Archaeological Museum, as it remains today.

Highlights include hand-made pottery from the Bronze Age settlement of Bağlararası in the centre of Çeşme, one of the earliest wine-producing sites known, and sculptures, figurines and coins from the ancient city of Erythrai. A display on the Ottoman-Russian naval battle of 1770 stands out, and a hall of amphorae recovered from the sea shows how much trade once passed this coast.