The toy museum run by İzmit municipality is on Kapanca Sokak, the street in the Akçakoca quarter best known for its old houses, so the setting matches the subject. It opened on a Saturday in December, at three in the afternoon.
There are fourteen rooms and 460 square metres of display holding some 430 toys. The range runs from eighteenth-century German porcelain dolls and traditional rag dolls to the Eyüp toys of İstanbul and nostalgic Turkish-made pieces, with collectors' figures, racing cars and educational toys gathered from elsewhere in the world.
It is not only a display. There are teaching areas and workshops built around children's motor skills, and rooms where old children's films and cartoons are shown. A cafe is set up as a place to sit, with interactive play areas beside it, and there are green spaces outside, so the visit works for families rather than only for children.
The municipality made the museum from its own resources, designing and building it in its carpentry and welding workshops.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kocaeli as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.3 °C in January to 24 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (108 mm) and lightest in August (42 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
