SEKA Paper Museum

About this place

The first sheet of paper ever made in Turkey came off a machine in this building on 18 April 1936, and the mill kept running for almost seventy years until production stopped in 2005. Rather than flatten it, Kocaeli's municipality turned the First Paper Factory into a museum, opened in November 2016: four floors, more than 12,000 square metres and 16 halls, billed as Turkey's first paper museum and the largest of its kind anywhere. Admission is entirely free. What sets it apart is that the machinery is not behind glass. You walk among it on the original factory floor, from the pulp and bleaching vats to the enormous paper machines and on to a print room full of old presses. Around 115 display cases hold hundreds of documents, photographs and objects, and a hall is devoted to Mehmed Ali Kağıtçı, the engineer who founded the mill and whose name is now on the street outside. The industrial side is the star: anyone who likes machines or the early republican era will happily spend two and a half hours here, while a brisk walk-through takes about an hour. Signage is mostly Turkish with some English; do not expect Arabic. For families it is an easy choice. The floors are flat and pushchair-friendly, there are lifts between levels, and free children's workshops for ages 4 to 13 (hand papermaking and more) run at weekends; registration opens on kocaelimuze.com every Wednesday at 11:00 and places fill fast. Right next door, in the Second Paper Factory, is the Kocaeli Science Centre, so the pair make a solid half day for children. Everything is indoors and air-conditioned, which makes it a fine refuge from August heat or a wet day in Sapanca. Getting there from Sapanca is simple: about 40 km by car on the motorway, 35 to 45 minutes, with parking on site. The museum sits inside Seka Park, the long waterfront park on İzmit Bay with a seaside promenade, cafés and playgrounds. Without a car, take a bus or train from Sapanca to İzmit and then the Akçaray tram to the Sekapark stop. The museum closes on Mondays, so plan around that.