Historic fortress keeps Kars’ cheese culture alive

KARS

Located inside the historic Süvari Fortress, the museum presents visitors with various aspects of cheese production and local life.

Türkiye’s first themed cheese museum, established in 2022 inside Kars’ historic Süvari Fortress, is preserving the city’s rich cheese-making culture and attracting growing numbers of local and foreign visitors.

Kars is renowned for its dairy production, particularly varieties such as gruyere, çeçil and kaşar cheese.

The Kars Cheese Museum, established as part of the “Future Tourism in Türkiye” project jointly carried out by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, the United Nations Development Program and Anadolu Efes, has been drawing attention since it opened. Kars was designated as the world’s 18th cheese route in 2020 under the project.

Located inside the historic Süvari Fortress, the museum presents visitors with various aspects of cheese production and local life, from the endemic plants consumed by cattle to barns, milk-filled churns, highland life and the cheese-making process.

Opened in March 2022, the museum has 1,100 square meters of visitor space. It also introduces the endemic flowers that contribute to the distinctive flavor of locally produced cheeses.

Large blocks of Kars gruyere welcome visitors to the museum, which also features sections on gruyere production, cheese-making, video presentations, a model Kars train station, Kars’ vegetation, Ankara’s Gazi Train Station, traditional Kars houses, as well as chef and workshop areas.

Visitors can follow the transformation of milk collected in the highlands into cheese while learning about the region’s cultural and historical heritage.

The museum welcomed around 72,000 domestic and foreign visitors in the first seven months of 2026.

Kars Cheese Museum Director Yeşim Koç told state-run Anadolu Agency that visitor numbers have continued to increase each year since the museum opened four years ago.

“We had around 72,000 visitors in the first seven months of 2026. I am very pleased and happy because this number continues to grow every day. Hopefully, we will exceed 120,000 by the end of the year,” Koç said.

She stressed that the museum does more than tell the story of cheese.

“We do not only tell our visitors the story of cheese here. The museum is located inside a fortress with a completely historical character, so we also take visitors back into the past. We tell them both about history and Kars’ culture,” she said.

Koç said the story of Kars cheese begins not with milk but with plants.

“Because Kars has one of the longest traditions of highland livestock farming in Türkiye, plants are very important to us. There are around 80 endemic plant species among approximately 1,600 plant species found in Kars, and all of them have been documented in the literature,” she said.

“These endemic plants give the milk a distinctive flavor, which is directly reflected in the cheese,” she added.

Around 19,000-20,000 tons of Kars gruyere and Kars kaşar are produced annually, according to Koç, who said the region’s cheese producers are gradually preparing to expand into European markets.