The weekday morning I'm there the only sound is the creaking of wooden floorboards and the stairs as everyone moves around. There's an almost holy vibe about the place visitors are asked to switch their phones to silent and keep their voices low. It's delightful and poignant, joyful and sad. Some of the cabinets have secret, unmarked wooden drawers underneath, where people have surreptitiously left their own objects, mostly ticket stubs, coins, photos and comments about the museum scribbled on scraps of paper like an unofficial visitors book. Often the objects would 'talk among themselves', says Pamuk on the audio guide, the design process guided by intuition and 'the serendipitous nature of beauty'. Other exhibits contain ordinary objects such as glasses of Turkish tea, a handful of Istanbul soil, photographs of society events, matchbooks from bars that were hip in the '70s – all chosen and arranged to create a particular mood or illustrate a scene from the novel. The chapter one exhibit, for instance, is a billowing curtain that moves as if in a breeze, despite being inside a small box mounted on the wall like a painting. There's a glass-fronted display case for every one of the book's 83 chapters, each a work of art in its own right. It won European Museum of the Year award in 2014, in fact, for its 'personal, local and sustainable model for new museum development' and 'its radical exploration of the psychological meaning of the collecting process,' as it says on a plaque near the entrance.

I step into a gallery-like space with white walls and an open staircase linking the four floors of the building Pamuk spent 13 years transforming into this small but innovative museum.

It's close to Taksim Square, on the city's popular European side, but deep in the maze of crooked streets that make up the residential Cukurcuma district, a world away from the snaking lines of tourists I'd seen outside Hagia Sophia.Įntering the museum is like being admitted to a private club, particularly if you bring a copy of the book as it contains a 'ticket' that museum staff will stamp, giving you free admission. I'm halfway through it when, back in Istanbul after spending a week travelling around Turkey, I finally get to the museum. In a tangled swirl of art imitating life and vice versa, Kemal eventually buys the 19th century timber townhouse where Fusun had lived with her family from 1974 to 1999 (Pamuk bought the building in 1999) to turn it into a museum for his collection and, in the book, enlists Pamuk to write his story. What follows is 700-odd pages of love, loss, depression and obsession as – spoiler alert – Kemal loses both women and spends eight long years pining for Fusun, collecting objects she has touched, worn or used to soothe his breaking heart. Thirty-something Kemal is engaged to the beautiful Sibel when he begins an affair and falls for 18-year-old Fusun.

Museum of innocence turkey