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Türkiye’s military and political past is being brought into sharp focus in Istanbul through the Hisart Living History and Diorama Museum, a privately founded institution that uses immersive dioramas, life-sized figures, and original artifacts to bridge the gap between historical knowledge and lived experience.
Established in 2014 by industrialist and collector Nejat Cuhadaroglu, the museum positions itself as evidence of what he describes as Türkiye’s “world-defining” historical depth, stretching across centuries and civilizations.
From its earliest point, the museum sets out to highlight a central idea: pride in history must be matched by understanding it. Cuhadaroglu has repeatedly stressed that while Türkiye often celebrates its past, it does not always know it well enough, a gap he aims to close through visual storytelling rather than conventional display cases.
Rather than following classical museum models, Hisart was designed around dioramas, meaning three-dimensional scenes that reconstruct historical moments using detailed settings and human figures. This approach allows visitors to walk through carefully staged episodes from history instead of simply looking at isolated objects behind glass.
The collection brings together material from a wide historical span, covering the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) era, the Seljuk period, the Ottoman state, World War I, the Turkish War of Independence, and World War II. Alongside original and documented artifacts, the museum features more than 500 mannequins arranged in battle scenes, command centers, and daily life settings, all intended to reflect the conditions of their time as closely as possible.
Cuhadaroglu has linked the museum’s emergence to his long-standing interest in diorama art, noting that his involvement began in childhood with drawings and scale models before growing into systematic collecting. Some of those early works are now displayed in the museum, underlining the personal nature of the project and the decades-long effort behind assembling the collection.
According to its founder, gathering the materials now on display has taken a lifetime rather than a short investment period. He has underlined that the museum’s method of presenting historical events through reconstructed scenes is unique on a global scale, particularly in the way it blends original artifacts with artistic interpretation.
In his view, Türkiye’s position at the crossroads of continents has made it culturally, politically, and strategically central throughout history, a reality he believes the museum visually proves. This emphasis runs through the museum narrative, linking individual objects and scenes into a broader historical flow rather than treating them as disconnected exhibits.
Beyond its permanent home in Istanbul, the Hisart collection has been taken on the road through a series of external exhibitions. Over the years, exhibitions have been staged at prominent venues such as the Presidential Complex, Ataturk Cultural Center, Atlas Cinema, and Halic Congress Center, as well as in cities outside Istanbul.
As part of the 2025 Türkiye Culture Route Festival, the museum organized or contributed to several thematic exhibitions. These included a “National Struggle” exhibition in Samsun and Trabzon featuring Ataturk’s original uniform, a “Women Heroes” exhibition in Erzurum, and a display in Gaziantep focusing on the period from Gallipoli to the War of Independence. In total, around 20 exhibitions have been organized directly from the museum’s collection, with additional support provided to other shows and a symposium hosted under the museum’s umbrella.
Museum director Omer Calsimsek has emphasized that Hisart was founded with the aim of reminding society of histories that risk being forgotten. He has pointed out that the museum operates largely on a volunteer basis and continues despite financial losses, driven by a sense of public service rather than profit.
Calsimsek has drawn attention to the importance of young visitors, particularly when it comes to understanding the realities of the Turkish War of Independence. He has noted that many visitors are surprised by the basic equipment on display, often asking whether such limited tools were really used. For him, these reactions show how difficult it is to grasp the meaning of deprivation without seeing it. The dioramas, he argues, help visitors understand not only the military struggle but also the battle against shortages, lack of materials, and everyday hardship.
When recreating recent historical events, the museum bases its dioramas on surviving photographs to achieve the closest possible realism. For earlier periods where no visual records exist, designers rely on written sources, archaeological evidence, and surviving objects to build informed reconstructions.
Calsimsek has explained that younger audiences tend to show greater interest in these early-period scenes. While they are already familiar with the imagery of the Second World War through films and photographs, scenes such as Timur’s war elephants or the sieges of medieval Anatolia feel new and more memorable to them, precisely because they have rarely been visualized before.
The museum continues to expand its collection and produce new dioramas, while also preparing for a broader international role. From 2026 onward, Hisart plans to launch traveling exhibitions as part of a cultural diplomacy initiative. The project is expected to cover the Middle East, the Turkic republics, and Europe, with two exhibitions planned in the United States.
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