The Health Museum in the northwestern province of Edirne, winner of the Mercury Perfection Award and the Europe Museum Award, has been accepted into the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List after seven months of work. 

Hotel occupancy rates in Istanbul dropped 32 percent in April compared to the same month of 2015, outstripping the average nationwide drop of 22 percent, a leading tourism association has said, according to Anadolu Agency.

The ancients of the Neolithic era 8,500 years ago might have been “painting the town red” a whole lot earlier than over-exuberant revelers of the 1800s, according to new findings from the Yeşilova Mound in İzmir, which suggest red was the favorite color of the prehistoric inhabitants and was used extensively.

The number of visitors to Turkey’s museums fell by almost half in the first three months of this year, while the number of foreign visitors also dropped by 60 percent. The sharp decline is thought to have been caused by a number of terrorist attacks hitting Turkish cities, which has led to a big drop in the overall number of tourists visiting Turkey.

Kaynak:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/museum-visitors-in-turkey-down-almost-half-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=99407&NewsCatID=385

Ancient fossils dating back 8.5 million years, currently on display at the Çankırı Culture and Tourism Directorate, are set to be moved to the new Çankırı Museum. In 2014, officials decided to turn a building, first built as a government institution at the start of the 20th century by Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II, into a museum. The building had served as the Çankırı Courthouse for many years until the court was relocated. 

Excavations are set to resume at Ordu’s 2,300-year-old Kurul Castle, the first scientific excavation field in the eastern Black Sea region, as the site will be transformed into a new tourism center which will “change Ordu’s history.” An ancient settlement and a first degree archaeological site, Kurul Castle is located on a sharp rock in the Bayadı neighborhood, 13 kilometers away from the city center. 

Libya has not faced the same risk to its antiquities as Syria and Iraq, though there is evidence the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is involved in the smuggling of antiquities, Libyan and international experts said May 11.  Libya is rich in ancient sites, including some of North Africa’s finest Roman and Greek ruins, as well as prehistoric rock art in the desert region of Fezzan.

Officials from Istanbul’s Beyoğlu Municipality have forced the owners of a hotel to shut down a rooftop screen playing a video by the artist Işıl Eğrikavuk, citing “visual pollution.”The work titled “Time to Sing a New Song” was on display at YAMA, a public art installation series screened on top of Istanbul’s Marmara Pera hotel.

Hotel investments in Turkey plunged by 42 percent in the first quarter of the year from the same period of 2015, according to the Hotel Association of Turkey (TÜROB). Subsidy documents worth 645.3 million Turkish Liras were obtained for the establishment of 53 new hotel projects in 27 cities, according to a TÜROB statement released on May 5.

Turkey will speed up works to develop “halal tourism” in a bid to lure even more Muslim tourists, Culture and Tourism Minister Mahir Ünal said at the opening of the Halal Tourism Conference 2016 in the Central Anatolian province of Konya. Ünal said Turkey is stepping up its efforts to boost halal tourism, which has a share of around 12 percent in the global tourism.