Cut stone
A stone entrance and local cut-stone walls give the building its durable character. Tight ashlar courses carry the domes and hold the changing temperatures of the cold, warm and hot rooms.
Architecture
Stone, dome, marble, arch.
The building holds to a small vocabulary — used with confidence, and repeated for three centuries.
The roofscape
The roof is shaped by a family of seven stone domes pierced with circular glass lights, which reveal the sequence of rooms below.
The historical mural
A large mural of hammam life adds colour to the pale stone and marble interior and connects the building with the social history of the Turkish bath.
The cold-room domes
The cold room is organised beneath a large central dome, supported by smaller domed spaces on either side. Marble seating follows the walls and keeps the room calm and open.
The round-arched passage
A round-arched cut-stone doorway leads into the hot room — a compressed threshold between the warm and hot spaces.
The hot room
The hararet is a wide domed room with star-shaped openings pierced through the dome. Daylight enters as precise beams and moves across the marble during the day.
Göbek taşı
The central heated platform, low and marble-clad, 10 m² in size. Its edges have softened over nearly three centuries of use.
Kurnas
Sixteen marble basins fed by warm water stand around the walls of the bathing space.
Reservoir and furnace
The water reservoir and furnace sit directly west of the hot room, keeping the old working relationship between water, fire and the heated bathing rooms.
Natural light and temperature
The dome openings let in light without opening the room to the weather, and let steam rise while keeping the heat inside — an environmental strategy that has not needed to change.