Ankara stacks 4,000 years into one hill: Hittite lions, a Phrygian citadel, Augustus's own autobiography carved in marble, and the Ottoman lanes below. Then 1920 arrives, and a provincial town becomes the capital of a republic.
Housed in a 15th-century bedesten and han rebuilt by Mahmut Pasha, this is the world's finest Hittite collection: Çatalhöyük wall paintings, Alacahöyük sun discs, and the Kültepe cuneiform tablets. Open 08:30–17:30 winter, to 19:00 summer.
The outer walls are Byzantine, raised by Emperor Michael II around 859, but the stones are recycled Roman: look for column drums, inscribed grave stelae and marble fragments jammed into the ramparts. The inner keep (İç Kale) is free and always open.
A 3rd-century Caracalla-era bath complex dedicated to Asclepius, excavated down to the hypocaust: you walk between the brick pillars that once held the heated floor. The palaestra is lined with milestones and Roman funerary stelae found across the city.
The 1428 mosque honours the founder of the Bayramiyya order and leans directly against the Roman temple wall — two empires sharing masonry. Five minutes north stands the 15m Column of Julian, raised for Emperor Julian's visit to Ancyra in 362 AD.
Onat and Arda's 1953 mausoleum on Rasattepe hill, approached along the Lion Road lined with 24 Hittite-style lions. The museum beneath the Hall of Honour holds Atatürk's library, his cars, and dioramas of Sakarya and Dumlupınar.
A restored Ottoman mansion in the Hamamönü quarter serving Ankara tava (lamb baked over rice) and mantı in a courtyard with a stone fountain. The whole district of half-timbered houses was rescued from collapse in a 2008–2011 restoration project.
The Young Turks' club hall where the assembly met on 23 April 1920 and voted through the War of Independence. The chamber survives with its original wooden desks, oil lamps and stove; adjoining rooms cover the abolition of the sultanate in 1922.
The 1927 Ankara Palas by Vedat Tek and Kemalettin Bey was the young republic's only grand hotel, hosting its first state balls. Opposite, Krippel's 1927 equestrian Atatürk statue marks the square where the republic's first parades formed up.
Ninety minutes west lies the Phrygian capital where Alexander cut the Gordian Knot in 333 BC. You walk inside the 53m Midas Mound tumulus to a juniper burial chamber of about 740 BC — the oldest standing wooden structure on earth. UNESCO-listed in 2023.
An Ottoman mansion inside the citadel walls run as an ethnographic house-restaurant: copper pots, ploughs and gramophones fill the lower floors while the kitchen makes bazlama on a saç griddle. The upper terrace looks straight down over Ulus.
Koyunoğlu's 1927 building was Atatürk's temporary tomb from 1938 to 1953 — the marble grave slab is still in the central hall. Inside: Seljuk mihrabs, carved minbar doors from Konya, Ottoman calligraphy and Anatolian carpet looms.
Restored lanes of Ottoman timber houses around the 1440 Karacabey Hamamı, still a working bath. Craft workshops sell ebru marbling and oya lacework, and Mehmet Âkif Ersoy's house — where he wrote the Turkish national anthem in 1921 — is a small museum.