The museum houses a collection of about 1 million objects from many different civilizations and cultures, which makes it one of the richest ten museums in the world and the first one in Turkey.
The İstanbul Archaeological Museums consist of three different sections: The Museum of Archaeology, the Ancient Orient Museum and the Tiled Kiosk Museum. The collections include objects from many different civilizations founded on regions that became a part of the Ottoman Empire, from the Balkans to Africa, from Anatolia and Mesopotamia to the Arabian Peninsula and to Afghanistan. Visitors of the İstanbul Archaeological Museums discover a superb garden and three different buildings inside this garden.
Those three buildings present traces from different ages and civilizations. In the Section of Ancient Orient, artifacts belonging to civilizations including Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Hittite discovered in Arabia, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia are exhibited.
The Museum of Archaeology, which is the biggest one, hosts the collections of Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman Periods, Thrakia-Bithynia, Byzantium, İstanbul through the Ages, Troia and Anatolia through the Ages and the Neighbouring Cultures of Anatolia: Cyprus, Syria-Palestine. Meanwhile, in the Tiled Kiosk, outstanding tile and ceramic works belonging to the Turkish and Islamic art may be seen.