Cut stone
The bathhouse is built in local cut stone, in tight ashlar courses. The walls carry both the load of the domes and the changes in temperature between rooms.
Architecture
Stone, dome, marble, arch.
The building holds to a small vocabulary — used with confidence, and repeated for three centuries.
The roofscape
The bathhouse roof is shaped by a family of stone domes punctured with circular glass lights, revealing the sequence of rooms below.
The historical mural
A large mural depicting hammam culture adds colour to the pale stone and marble interior, connecting the building with the social history of the Turkish bath.
The cooling-room domes
The cooling room has a central dome and additional smaller domed spaces. Marble benches wrap the walls.
The round-arched transition
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.
Göbek taşı
The central heated platform, low and marble-clad. Its edges have softened over three centuries of use.
Kurnas
Marble basins fed by warm water are positioned around the walls of the bathing space.
Reservoir and furnace
West of the hot room sit the water reservoir and furnace that continue to heat the building.
Natural light and temperature
The dome openings admit light without opening the room to weather, and let steam rise while keeping heat inside — an environmental strategy that has not needed to change.