DRIVING INFORMATION

Alaçatı – Uzunkuyu: 21 kilometers

ZEYTİNLER & UZUNKUYU VİLLAGES

Zeytinler, the first village you will see after you exit İzmir/ Çeşme highway through Zeytinler detour is a green village surrounded by pine trees. Here you can observe the authentic village life in stone houses and have tea at the typical cafe where elderly people continue working on agriculture and farm animals while young population work in fish farms.

Uzunkuyu Village, 1 km away from Zeytinler Village is another green, clean, small village worth visiting. The world’s biggest olive oil complex, Köstem Olive Oil Museum, now a technology and industry museum stimulating the process of olive oil pasting production in one-to-one scale. Producing olive oil by sticking to the original methods and ingredients, here you can get to know thousands of years’ old culture and tradition of olive oil in our country. The museum, established by Orthopedics and Traumatology Specialist Associate Professor Levent Köstem and his wife Mrs. Güler, is a real commitment story that involves searching, tracking and collecting efforts for many years. The collection includes items such as historical stones, ovens, drilled crushing machines, carboys, amphoras, hand-stitched olive sacks and 3000 years old olive oil lamps, which the couple picked one by one wandering in the Aegean region. They have rebuilt a grinding, pressing, filtrating and decomposing system from 3000 BC by using stone & wood and preserving its original form. They have also taken on the mission to develop olive culture in Urla and Çeşme Peninsula, the first region that produced olive oil where the history of olive farming dates back to 39 BC.

The moment you enter the museum, you get face-to-face with the root of a 1000 years old olive tree. This treasure, that witnessed the history of this land with its veins and curls was found by Levent Bey on the hills of Özbek village and was survived from being burned to ashes.

It should also be noted that with its 20.000 hectares of land, the museum serves countless benefits to the locals and villagers, as it also functions as a training institute. The museum houses different sections on olive oil technologies, olive & olive oil culture, an olive oil factory and a warehouse, wood and ceramic ateliers, meeting rooms, children playing rooms; as well as a Soap, Hygene and Cleaning Museum in its 5650 square metre large building. After your visit, you should stop by the Köstem Organic Olive Farm Shop that sells other villages’ products including olive, olive oil, wine and cheese.

500 different types of tree can be found in the garden that serves as an arboretum aiming to add to the knowledge of the visitors. It has an olive garden that includes trees from various olive-growing regions of Anatolia as well as Aegean olive types. The complex also has an “education garden” where workshops which aim at arousing children’s curiosity in nature are held.

If  you drive a bit more from Uzunkuyu village, you will see ‘Hanedan’, an authentic cafe among the green fields where you can have a delicious breakfast. The place also serves meat from famous Uzunkuyu butcher and tasty homemade dishes at any time of the day.