ADMISSION TICKETS TO ANI

Once-upon-a-time there was no fee to enter Ani. However, from the early 1990s onwards tickets had to be purchased.

Tickets for Ani are sold at a booth beside the Lion Gate, and they can also be purchased in advance at the Kars archaeological museum. Admission to Ani currently costs (2010 prices) five Turkish Lira for adults, and two Turkish Lira for children and those with concessions such as students with ID cards. The tickets below are from 2005 and are priced according to the old Turkish currency: five million Turkish Lira, and two million Turkish Lira.

The tickets for Ani do not have a special design and they are identical to those sold at most archaeological sites and museums controlled by the Turkish Ministry of Culture.

The Ani ticket scam

As you can see from the above pictures, the tickets are in two parts. Actually, the complete tickets are in three parts. At the point of sale one part remains in the ticket book as a record of its sale. The other two parts of the ticket should then be given to the visitor (if there is a separate ticket booth and entrance gate), or only the larger part given (the part marked "be kept during the visit") if there is no separate gate. At Ani there is no separate gate.

If you are only given the small part of a ticket at the Ani ticket booth (the part marked "be remained in the control point") then you are being given part of a previously sold ticket and the man in the booth is simply pocketing your five million Lira!

The fraud is very blatant and has been going on for years - though it seems to have diminished in recent years after the individual who manned the booth during the 1990s and the 2000s retired. Before 2003 it would have been impossible to hide the practice because there was always a big difference in the number of tickets sold at Ani and the number of people applying for permits to visit Ani - so the scam must have been known about by officials in Kars. Since 2003 no permit has been required to visit Ani - so there is now no independent record of visitor numbers, making the scam even easier to operate. The same scam operates in many Ministry of Culture sites throughout Turkey.

All visitors to Turkish Ministry of Culture sites should make sure that they are always given the large part of the ticket (the part that is marked "be kept during the visit").