Nobel prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk has established arguably the first museum in the world replicating the chapters of a novel. Pamuk’s ode to literature is hidden away – but not far away – from the tourist noise of terrifically busy Istanbul. It is found in a residential area adjacent to the popular Istiklal shopping street where thousands of the city’s estimated 13 million inhabitants traverse daily. It is named after Pamuk’s novel, The Museum of Innocence, published in 2008. Inside the museum unfolds the love story of Kemal and Füsun against the ever-present mesmerising Istanbul. The romance between Kemal, described in the novel as a “wealthy heir about to be engaged to aristocratic Sibel”, and the “beautiful shopgirl” Füsun starts in the mid-1970s.
