Guide
The Kars Cheese Museum opened in 2022 in the Suvari Tabya, a fortification built in 1734 in central Kars. The provincial directorate calls it Türkiye's first thematic cheese museum and, at roughly 5,000 square metres of activity space with a 250-square-metre museum shop, the largest cheese museum in the world.
What it shows is the making rather than the finished product: the production process of the cheeses Kars is known for, beginning with gruyère and going on to karin kaymagi, cecil, the oily tulum of Kars, kasar curd, Turkmen sacak cheese, plaited kasar, deve dili, and the geographically indicated Kars kasar.
Around that are a section of recipes using these cheeses, a section on the endemic plants of the Kars highlands, and a barn section showing the animal breeds raised on those plants, along with a workshop, a cheese counter and a cafeteria.
The museum sits on the Kars Cheese Route, which the directorate describes as Türkiye's first cheese route and as registered as the eighteenth cheese route in the world — so it can be visited as one stop among several rather than on its own.
