Unmapped Gems
CityBest December – February for snow, June – September for the plateau

Kars

A high, cold plateau city in Turkey's far northeast, still built in the Russian Empire's stone and street grid from its 40 years under the Tsar.

Kars sat inside the Russian Empire from 1878 to 1918, and the baltic-grid streets and stone mansions of Kaleiçi are what's left of it — a look found nowhere else in Turkey. Winters are genuinely harsh and genuinely beautiful, close to the Georgian border and a short drive from the ruined Armenian capital at Ani.

Kars