The Kars Museum is a well-organised regional museum covering the long history of this frontier zone, from Chalcolithic and Bronze Age artefacts through Urartian, Hellenistic, Armenian, and Ottoman periods to the Russian occupation of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The collection is particularly strong on the medieval Armenian period — the richness of the regional material culture from this era is often underappreciated.
The Russian occupation section is especially interesting in context: Kars was part of the Russian empire from 1878 to 1918, and the tsarist administration remade the city with a street grid, European-style stone buildings, and an Orthodox church. Photographs and maps in the museum show how thoroughgoing the transformation was. The museum makes a useful starting point before heading out to the Ani ruins.