Those considering Kars as a travel destination will find several distinct themes among the cultural attractions featured here: cheese culture, museum history, the battles on the Caucasus Front, and buildings with changing uses. When choosing accommodation in Kars, this is a helpful first question: are you especially interested in a specialized museum, historical documents, or the history of architecture?
A Themed Cheese Museum
The Kars Cheese Museum opened to visitors in 2022 as Turkey’s first themed cheese museum. It is a tasting stop on the Kars Cheese Route. This route is registered as Turkey’s first cheese route and listed as the world’s 18th cheese route. Cheese is explicitly the museum’s central theme; the route also connects it to places beyond the museum itself. This distinguishes its focus from the historical and military history themes of other museums in Kars. If you are looking for a clearly defined cultural theme for your trip, you can take this connection into account when choosing places to visit.
Museums with Different Histories
The Kars Museum was founded in 1959 and moved to its current service building in Kars in 1980. The two dates mark different milestones: 1959 is the institution’s founding, and 1980 is its move to its current service building. Its history therefore differs from that of the Cheese Museum, whose distinctive features are its specialized theme and its connection to the Kars Cheese Route. These offer two different starting points when choosing cultural attractions: the development of a museum institution and a museum explicitly dedicated to cheese.
The Kafkas Front War History Museum offers a different perspective. This interactive museum explores the battles on the Caucasus Front through historical documents and recreated scenes from soldiers’ everyday lives under the wartime conditions of the period. The documents and reconstructions offer different emphases: one focuses on the battles, the other on soldiers’ daily lives. The White Carriage is also on display in the museum garden. For two years, Kazım Karabekir Pasha used it as a special carriage on journeys between Kars and Erzurum. This exhibit adds a specific historical vehicle and its use to the museum’s themes.
Buildings and Changing Uses
The Fethiye Mosque in the Ortakapı neighborhood illustrates several phases of use in a single building. The Russians built it as a church in the Baltic architectural style in the late 19th century. After the early years of the Republic, it was used as a gymnasium; in 1985, it was converted into a mosque. The sequence of church, gymnasium, and mosque makes the changes in use clear. It offers a different way into Kars’ history than the founding and relocation dates of the Kars Museum: in one case, the focus is on institutional development; in the other, on the successive functions of a building.
The Tomb of Ebul Hasan Harakani and the Evliya Mosque complex belong to the General Directorate of Foundations. The responsible Council for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage listed both as worthy of protection and placed them under protection by Decision No. 227, dated May 9, 1990. Here, the focus is on the protected status of the named tomb and mosque complex. Compared with the Fethiye Mosque, this presents another aspect of architectural history: there, the sequence of different uses can be traced; here, the joint protection decision and the two named cultural heritage sites are central.
These differences can shape your choice of cultural attractions and the focus of your stay in Kars: the cheese route and specialist museum, museum history and documents, or buildings with different histories of use and protection.
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Go to the main travel overview: Kars.
