Istanbul Archaeological Museums is a museum complex consisting of three main units: Archaeological Museum, Ancient Oriental Artifacts Museum and Tiled Kiosk Museum. The collection of the Archeology Museum, Turkey's first museum, includes more than one million artifacts from various cultures brought from the empire's lands.

In 1887-1888, a museum building was needed where important works such as the Alexander Sarcophagus and the Tabnit Sarcophagus, brought to Istanbul from the Sidon (Sainda, Lebanon) King's Necropolis Excavations, which were considered the most important discoveries of the period, could be exhibited. Thereupon, the Archaeological Museum, which was established under the leadership of archaeologist, painter and museologist Osman Hamdi Bey and under the name of Müze-i Hümayun (Imperial Museum), was opened to visitors on 13 June 1891. Today's Main Museum Building was formed by adding the left and right wings to the building, which was built by the famous architect of the period, Alexandre Vallaury, in 1903 and 1908. The works in the exhibition halls in the Main Building are exhibited in chronological order, with an emphasis on the ancient center. These works include the Weeping Women Sarcophagus, Tabnit Sarcophagus, Alexander Sarcophagus from the Sidon King Necropolis Excavation finds; Brankhit statues of the Didim-Miletus Sacred Road, Kore and Kouros (young girl and boy) statues, belonging to the period from the Archaic Age to the end of the Roman Age, the Lion Statue of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus; Aphrodite's head from the famous Pergamon Zeus Altar, portrait of Alexander the Great; There are works of sculpture found in the three great marble cities of the Roman period, Aphrodisias, Ephesos and Miletos.

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