Ottoman military school · 1848
The former Ottoman military school (1848) where Atatürk graduated in 1899, now the city museum with his memorial room.
These are the stories you can open in the 3D view, each at its own numbered point on the model.
This long cream-coloured building was built in 1848 as an Ottoman military school; Wikidata gives the year as 1847. It measures about 80 by 46 metres around an inner courtyard and rises about 10 metres to its cornice band. The style is neo-Renaissance with Oriental details, such as the shaped arches of the ground-floor windows.
The school prepared cadets for the Ottoman army. From 1900 to 1909 it also housed a military academy. After Ottoman rule ended, it served as a barracks until 1974. In 1976 the NI Institute and Museum Bitola, an institution founded in 1934, moved in, and it has been the city museum ever since.
Among the cadets of this school was Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. He studied here from about 1896 and graduated in 1899; sources give slightly different years for the start. Many visitors from Turkey come to see the school where he spent part of his youth.
Inside the museum, a memorial room of about 120 square metres is dedicated to Atatürk. It was opened on 3 October 1998 by presidents Kiro Gligorov and Süleyman Demirel. It recalls the years he spent as a cadet in Manastır, as Bitola was then called.
The main entrance faces the garden to the east-south-east. Four marble pillars stand at the door, and above it is a relief panel with an Arabic inscription. Over the panel runs a long balcony carried on iron consoles, and a curved gable with a cartouche crowns the bay. In this model the inscription is shown as an ornament, not as readable text.
Today the building holds the archaeological, ethnological and historical collections of the Bitola museum. Among the best-known objects is the Bitola inscription, a stone inscription in Cyrillic letters. The ethnology rooms show traditional costumes from the region, and the courtyard gives the long wings a quiet centre.
Typical prices are our estimates for orientation, not menu prices. Check opening hours on the spot.
Walk around the model, switch between day and night, and hear each story read aloud in English, Macedonian or Turkish.
Open in 3D
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