Masaba Gupta visits the ‘Museum Of Innocence’ — a ‘simple blink-and-miss brick red coloured vertical building’ — in Istanbul

When the designer asked these questions to her mentor, he asked her to visit the ‘Museum Of Innocence’ created by Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul. “I am now reading the popular novel that was immortalised simultaneously,” Masaba said, sharing that she is reading Pamuk’s eponymous novel “meticulously – chapter by chapter and emotion by emotion”.

 

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Sharing her experience, she wrote that it is a “simple blink-and-miss brick red coloured vertical building”. “It is an exceptional display of everything the characters use, love, breathe, touch..in the novel. But more importantly, it is an exceptional display of how to push yourself creatively, to think differently and to think ahead of your time,” Masaba said.

Concluding, she shared that there are some pieces of the museum in the book — “between snippets of the Bosphorus shimmering in all its glory…quaint streets…The Hagia Sophia and other wonders of this city magical city.”

Nestled in an old three-story wooden house in Çukurcuma dating to 1897, the Museum of Innocence is believed to be the first museum ever dedicated to a novel. “While the Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk was writing his novel ‘The Museum of Innocence’ (Masumiyet Müzesi), he started collecting several objects as a source of inspiration for his creative process,” according to the Istanbul Tour Studio.

Pamuk’s novel takes us through the journey of Kemal during the 1960s and 1970s as he becomes consumed by his intense love for a young woman named Füsun. Kemal’s infatuation leads him to collect various items associated with Füsun, such as her dresses, driver’s license, and even the 4213 cigarettes she once smoked and discarded. Today, these symbolic objects are showcased in the Museum of Innocence, meticulously arranged in a chronological manner that mirrors the chapters of the novel.

“Orhan Pamuk rightly says that one does not need to read the novel to understand the museum, as the exhibits actually aim to document life in Istanbul from the 1950s up to the 2000s with pictures, objects and ephemera meticulously collected by the writer himself.”

Enclosed within the concluding pages of Orhan Pamuk’s novel, ‘The Museum of Innocence’ lies a printed ticket, which will give you a free entry into the museum.

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