About Collection

The Mehmet Nihat Nigizberk Collection of Architectural Photographs and Drawings consists of photographs, photo cards, notebooks, plans and architectural drawings related to specific historical buildings and also construction and restoration projects in the architect’s archive. These archival materials, which bear witness to the Late Ottoman and early republican era in Türkiye, reflect the conditions of the historical monuments (primarily examples of Anatolian Seljuks, Ottoman, Mamluk and Arab architecture) and also applications of architectural practices in construction and restoration as well as social and cultural environment of the period.

The photographs and photo cards, as the main body of the collection located in 18 albums and 11 envelopes,  comprised of images of over 100 unique structures in over 40 cities such as İstanbul, Bursa, Konya, Damascus, Jerusalem, Gaza and Cairo ranging in the geographies of Anatolia, the Middle East   and North Africa.

The notebooks of the architect  (16 in total, 7000 pages), dating from  1909 to 1948, also form a valuable source for researchers as they contain a wide range of information related to  architect’s restoration and construction projects, voyage notes, personal observations, architectural calculations, drawings, construction material types and their prices.

Researchers are able to navigate through the collection by filtering the records for specific structures, locations, structure types, architectural elements as well as document types.