A Day at a Turkish Hammam: What Happens, What to Wear, What to Say

A Turkish hammam is a heated public bath. You change into a wrap, pass through rooms of rising heat, and, if you book a scrub, an attendant of your own gender washes you with a rough mitt and soap foam, using water poured from marble basins: there is no pool. The three baths whose prices follow were built in 1556, 1584 and 1741.

A bath for the whole town, and why there were so many

Big Ottoman houses had a small bath of their own, and villages had a washing corner (gusülhane). Towns had public baths, çarşı hamamları, in every district. A hammam was also a place to meet: for women, who had little reason to leave the house, it was a place to go out, talk and have fun.

Why a town needed so many

• Income for a foundation. A foundation (vakıf) is a charitable endowment: it owns buildings and spends their income on a mosque or a library. A bath was a building that earned. Cağaloğlu was built in 1741 for the library of Sultan Mahmud at Hagia Sophia.
• A service for the neighbourhood. The mosque complexes of Fatih, Süleymaniye, Beyazıt and Yenicami each had a bath.
• Then it stopped. In 1768 an order forbade new bazaar baths in Istanbul, Üsküdar, Galata, Eyüp and along the Bosphorus because they used so much water and wood.

1. 1382, MudurnuThe oldest bath with a dated inscription: the twin bath of Yıldırım Bayezid.
2. 1466–67, Mahmud Paşa HamamıThe oldest dated bath in Istanbul.
3. About 1507–08, II. Bayezid HamamıBuilt for the public by Gülbahar Hatun, the wife of II. Bayezid. It is a museum today.
4. 1556–57, Hürrem Sultan HamamıBuilt by Sinan for Hürrem Sultan, in front of Hagia Sophia.
5. 1584, Çemberlitaş HamamıBuilt by Sinan for the foundation of Nurbanu Sultan, the mother of Murad III, to earn income for her complex in Üsküdar.
6. 1741, Cağaloğlu HamamıThe last of the big bazaar baths of Istanbul.

Who goes where: twin baths

Most large baths in Istanbul are twins (çifte hamam): two baths side by side, one for men and one for women. The two doors almost never open onto the same street, and the furnace usually stands beside both halves; at II. Bayezid Hamamı the furnace and the water tanks are shared.

Who washes you

• Tellâk in a men’s bath, natır in a women’s bath. They are the attendants who scrub and wash you.
• The same gender. Çemberlitaş serves each section with attendants of the same gender.
• Other staff in the old baths: the külhancı (furnace-keeper), the peştamalcı (wrap-man) and the kahveci (coffee-man).
• A single bath that was not a twin could open to women by day and to men at night.

Why it is hot, and why it is bright

A hammam is built around a fire. At the back stand a furnace and a water tank, the warm and hot rooms are heated, and nothing heats the floor of the changing hall. Light comes in through the lantern of the dome and through glass set in the domes.

The bath, step by step

A visit follows one order: heat, scrub, foam, rest.

1. Change and wrapChange in a cabin, put on the peştamal and slippers and walk through to the hot room. The entrance at Çemberlitaş includes the cabin and has no time limit.
2. Sweat on the göbek taşıLie on the raised marble slab in the middle of the hot room, or sit by a kurna, until you sweat. Cağaloğlu’s first stage is 15 minutes of rest in the hot room.
3. The keseThe attendant rubs your skin with the kese, a mitt, to make the dirt run off. Cağaloğlu: 10 minutes, with a one-use mitt. At Hürrem Sultan Hamamı the scrub is done in the warm room. Biraz daha hafif, lütfen.A little lighter, please.
4. The foamSoap foam is worked over you and rinsed off with water from the kurna. Cağaloğlu: 20 minutes of foam massage (35 in its Tip to Toe service), with olive-oil soap.
5. A massage, if you book oneAn oil massage is a separate service: 30 minutes in Çemberlitaş’s luxury package. Hürrem Sultan Hamamı’s four rituals run from 45 to 110 minutes.
6. Rest and teaWrapped in a dry cloth you rest in the cool part. Cağaloğlu serves tea, sherbet and Turkish delight.

What to wear and carry

Very little. Çemberlitaş and Cağaloğlu both include a wrap and slippers in the price, so nothing has to come from home. Çemberlitaş adds that you may bring your own swimwear.

What the things are for

• Peştamal: a fine woven cloth for covering the body in the hamam. Çemberlitaş and Cağaloğlu include one in the price.
• Tas: the small bowl for pouring water over yourself.
• Kese: the mitt for the scrub; Cağaloğlu hands out one-use mitts.
• Bohça: a cloth bundle in which women kept their peştamal, towels, tas and nalın for the bath.

Nalın: the bath clog

• What. The bath clog, one of the things women kept in the hamam bohça.
• Made of walnut, boxwood, ebony or sandalwood, and decorated with mother-of-pearl.
• Today Çemberlitaş and Cağaloğlu include slippers in the price.

What it costs: three tariffs, dated

Each bath prints its own prices; they are shown here as printed, in its currency, checked 25.10.2026. Ask for today’s price when you book.

See a bath without bathing

Three museums show the rooms and the tools of a bath without a wash. The cards run in alphabetical order of the town.

More old baths to see

• II. Bayezid Hamamı, in Istanbul: the museum in the photo.
• Eynebey and Şengül, in Ulus, Ankara.
• Karacabey, in Hamamönü, Ankara.
• Paşa Hamamı Müzesi, in Beypazarı.
• Havuzlu Hamam, in Ayaş.

Source: Kültür Portalı, Ankara directorate of culture and tourism (2014, updated 02.12.2020) · checked 25.10.2026.

Sources, checked 25.10.2026