Guide
Kocaeli Archaeological Museum stands beside the historic railway station building in the İzmit district of Kocaeli. Its name was changed to the present one in 2022, and its ethnographic section was moved to the Atatürk and Redif Museum, now called the Atatürk, Redif and Ethnography Museum.
The museum occupies the station complex built between 1873 and 1910, designed by the German architect Otto Ritter, together with a hall formed by joining the repair workshop, the water tank, the staff house and two tobacco monopoly stores. Restoration began in 2004 and the old station opened at the beginning of 2007.
The display area has two coin cases and eighteen cases of archaeological material, and besides the galleries there is a conference hall seating 130 and a restoration laboratory. Objects are shown partly in the galleries and partly in the open air in the museum garden.
The galleries hold works of the Palaeolithic and of the Hellenic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. In the open area of the garden are statues, sarcophagi, grave stelae and pithoi found in excavations in Kocaeli, with stone works surviving from the buildings of the period when Nikomedeia was a capital.
