Pera Museum

A treat for eyes and ears alike: tonwelt at Istanbul’s Pera Museum

Visitors to Istanbul’s Pera Museum are greeted by a triumphant Hercules, crowned with a wreath of laurels. No ordinary piece of art, this bust once served as a weight, its subject carefully chosen to assure customers of the merchant’s integrity. In fact, Hercules has been a symbol of strength and courage since antiquity. This is just one of many exhibits at the Pera Museum with a fascinating story to tell, and visitors can listen in with a tonwelt audio tour. Highly informative and entertaining, our tour of the permanent collection is available in Turkish and English on the latest PG AV audio-video guide.

Hercules-weight¹

This device caters equally to eyes and ears: the high-resolution display zooms in on details, shows interesting comparisons of images and provides additional visual information related to the exhibits.

In addition to its remarkable collection of old Anatolian weights and measures, the museum’s permanent collection boasts outstanding examples of Kütahya tiles and ceramics as well as paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries. The Pera Museum also hosts prestigious temporary exhibitions. “Life and Love”, showing prints, drawings and paintings by Marc Chagall, wrapped up on 24 January 2009, while Picasso’s famous series of engravings “Suite Vollard” will be on view from 16 February to 18 April 2010. tonwelt is also there to present these two influential artists and their work. Many of the selected images offer an intimate look at the private lives of these two stars of classic modern art – much to the delight of visitors.