Guide
Kırklareli Museum was founded in 1993 in a historic building of the late nineteenth century that had served as the municipal offices, and opened on 14 January 1994. Besides researching the history of the region, it serves as a centre for working with scientific institutions, helping and guiding them.
The building was put up in 1894 by Neşet Paşa, governor of Kırkkilise, and the mayor Hacı Mestan Efendi. The mansion served as the municipal building until 1962, was vacated in the 1970s and left to decay. In 1972 the provincial governorship decided to demolish it and sell the plot; the building was saved through the objection and the legal struggle of Nazif Karaçam, then head of the People's House. Restoration began in 1983 and continued with interruptions for ten years, and in 1989 the building was transferred to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for forty-nine years.
The museum is of two storeys over a basement, with coursed walls and reinforced concrete floors and arched windows on all four sides. A bay window on the first floor at the centre of the front is carried on four columns framing the main entrance, and the hidden roof is tiled.
The museum shows a collection of mounted animals of the species that have lived in the region, ethnographic material reflecting the cultural history of the area, and archaeological works found in excavations in the city and around it. As of 2023 the collection held 4,397 registered works in all: 2,285 coins, fifteen seals and seal impressions, 1,487 archaeological works and 610 ethnographic pieces, displayed in three sections — culture and nature, ethnography and archaeology.
The museum's principal duty is to register the natural and cultural property of the region. As of 2012, 269 registered buildings and sites had been recorded in the province, among them ninety-eight archaeological areas, three urban areas, thirteen natural reserves and 155 single historic buildings.
Visitor numbers have held steady. In 2013 the museum received 9,362 people, 417 of them foreign visitors; in 2014, 9,066, of whom 535 came from abroad; and in the eleven months of 2023, 9,859, of whom ninety-seven were foreign.
