Odunpazari Modern Museum, Turkey: The 'Venice of Turkey' is well worth leaving Istanbul for

At the end of a narrow lane, in an historic neighbourhood two-and-a-half hours by high-speed train from Istanbul, something catches my eye, something that doesn't seem to belong.

Unlike the charmingly crooked Ottoman-era houses painted lolly pink, safety yellow, even purple, the building I see is all arrow-straight horizontal beams of blonde wood, contemporary and intriguing.

I walk towards it, lured by its clean lines, until I'm standing right in front of it: Odunpazari Modern Museum, aka OMM, which opened in September and was designed by Kengo Kuma and Associates (KKAA), the Japanese architectural rock stars best-known for designing Tokyo's new national stadium ahead of the 2020 Olympics.

It's a startling juxtaposition, this monument to modernity in Odunpazari, the oldest part of Eskisehir, an "old city" (in Turkish) that has been inhabited since 3000 BCE.

Why isn't OMM in Istanbul or Ankara, Turkey's capital? Partly because Eskisehir-born architect and art collector Erol Tabanca commissioned the museum as an opportunity to put his vast collection of more than 1000 artworks on public display for the first time.

OMM also aligns with Eskisehir's reputation, despite its historic pedigree, as one of Turkey's most liveable and progressive cities. A university town, it's full of students on bikes, hip cafes and restaurants flanking the Porsak River and gondolas gliding along canals that have earned Eskisehir the unlikely nickname of "the Venice of Turkey".

The museum's artworks, by Turkish and international artists, do what great modern art does best: makes you stop and stare while upending any ideas you held about how things "should" be. There's delight around every corner: a glass of water sloshing around inside a cabinet, a larger-than-life embroidered portrait of a sleeping man, a stone girl curled up on a stone couch. In one high-ceilinged room an enormous root-like structure created especially for OMM by Japanese bamboo artist Tanabe Chikuunsai IV seems to grow out of one wall if it were alive.

But it's the space these pieces inhabit that really takes your breath away. KKAA's trademark use of wood makes OMM's boxy façade resemble a stack of lumber, a nod to Odunpazari's past as a timber trading hub (Odunpazari means "wood market").