Guide
Tobacco left a deep mark on the economic, political and cultural life of Bafra. So that this past should not be forgotten, and so that the tools and equipment used in growing and working tobacco should not disappear, a local civic platform drew up a project in 2013 to lay out the former district governor's lodging — once the residence of a tobacco company's expert — as a tobacco museum.
Under that project the old lodging was transferred from the provincial special administration to the Samsun metropolitan municipality. The work was completed with support from the Middle Black Sea Development Agency under a programme funding small-scale infrastructure investment for tourism, and the museum opened to visitors on 27 February 2018; it was formally established within the municipality by an approval dated 9 July 2020.
The museum has a garden and two floors. The lower floor holds a wide hall, the store, the electrical systems room, the museum café and the lavatories; the upper floor holds the exhibition and teaching room, the office and further lavatories.
Bafra tobacco is low in nicotine, small in leaf, light red in colour, fine-veined and fine-textured, highly elastic, full in the smoking, sweet and aromatic in scent. Foreign cigarette makers sought it out to improve their blends, to raise their quality through its aroma, to add to the fineness of luxury mixtures and to produce full-bodied kinds. The tobacco of Bafra in particular was sought after as among the highest quality cigarette tobacco in the world: small in leaf, fine in texture, bright and attractive in colour, with a scent of its own, and without equal in taste and in the smoking.
Tobacco became an important part of the city's economy in 1887, when the tobacco administration opened the second largest cigarette factory in Türkiye at Samsun. The Bafra and Samsun cigarettes made there became the best-known brands of the city and the district.
In the museum the stages leaf tobacco passed through in the factory are shown on the machines themselves: baling, moistening, opening, blending, cutting, rolling, packing and wrapping. In the garden the stages of growing are demonstrated in practice, from sowing the seed and planting out the seedlings to harvesting the leaf and drying it.
Visit status for this record: open to visitors.
