Kilis Museum

The museum occupies an old two-storey courtyard building in the centre of Kilis. No written record of its origin survives, but its construction suggests the 1880s. After it fell empty and largely collapsed, it was expropriated in 2009 and restored, and the decision to make it a museum came in 2018. It opened on 1 October 2021.

The ground floor is the archaeology hall. Many of the finds come from excavations at Oylum Höyük, one of the region's largest mounds: pottery, perfume bottles, flasks and bowls, grinding stones, statue heads, gravestones and press stones, glass tear bottles, metal rings, bracelets and crosses, and coins from the Greek to the Islamic period. Models show how soap was made, and a boiler for it is on view. Sarcophagi, steles and column bases stand in the space too.

Upstairs, the ethnography hall shows Ottoman and Republican clothing such as short jackets and fezzes, kitchenware, textiles, footwear, jewellery, pistols, rifles and ceremonial swords. Models of mosques, mansions, inns, a caravanserai, a covered bazaar and castles present the architecture of Kilis, alongside a recreation of the Battle of Marj Dabiq.