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Istanbul Fashion Week >>
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Bozcaada >>
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1st Istanbul International Opera Festival >>
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Open Air Museums in Turkey >>
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Feature Article
Magic Ice Museum opens in Istanbul
 Istanbul's Forum Shopping Mall is now home to the world's first ice museum in a warm climate. The Magic Ice Museum, which opened Friday at a ceremony, was realized with an investment of $20 million by the Norwegian Lofoten Trading Company.
As Istanbul readies for summer, one of the first permanent ice museums in a warm climate opened its doors April 23, set to be a cold “heaven” for those who want to escape the city’s heat.
The inauguration of the Magic Ice Museum was attended by top officials from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, one of whom said the city is like an open-air museum with its 8,500 years of history.
“The city served as the capital of three big cities. Despite this, the history of museums [in Istanbul] goes back only 165 years,” metropolitan municipality Vice President Ahmet Selamet said. “Despite its historical richness, the city could not take steps toward museum management in terms of both private and public enterprises.”
The ice museum, opened in one of the city’s newest shopping malls, Forum Istanbul, was built by the Norwegian Lofoten Trading Company with an investment of $20 million.
“Resources show that museum management is improved by private enterprises. But when we look at the development of museum management in Western countries, I have to say that what our private enterprises do for museums is not enough,” Selamet said.
The official added that the metropolitan municipality was doing its best to provide museums, noting the openings of the Panorama 1453 History Museum and the History of Islamic Science and Technology Museum. He added that the city would establish a water museum, an Akeopark and a planetarium in the near future.
Norwegian Ambassador to Ankara Cecile Landsverk said she is proud of the fact that there were historical relations between famous Istanbul and Nordic cities at least 1,000 years ago. She added that ice museums have become a special type of art in Norway.
‘Magic Ice’
 The Magic Ice Museum covers 1,400 square meters. Visitors will wear special Eskimo-style clothes and enter the museum through an ice tunnel. The museum’s interior temperature will be kept at minus 5 degrees Celsius in both winter and summer.
Some 70 tons of ice were brought from the River Torne in Sweden’s Jukkasjarvi region to make the museum’s ice statues, while its walls and tunnels were made with 100 tons of ice provided by Istanbul. The museum was conceived by the designers and sculptors of the Ice Hotel in Sweden.
The first section of the museum explains the Vikings’ 880 visit to Istanbul to visitors, who are provided with information through writings on sheets of ice. The information states that the first Vikings, who came to Istanbul over the Black Sea, used the name “Miklagard,” which means “protected lands,” for the city. A Runic writing, which belonged to a Viking soldier named Halvdan, has been found on the walls of the Hagia Sophia Museum in Istanbul.
The museum also holds an eight-meter boat and a house made of ice, as well as a map of the first Vikings’ travels.
The two other sections of the museum include information about Scandinavian nature and an ice vitamin bar, where visitors are offered fruit juice in ice glasses.
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