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My clothes were the first thing to go. Before entering the heat of Hürrem Sultan Hamamı, a 16th-century bathhouse in İstanbul, I wrapped my body in a thin, flat-woven towel called a peştemal. Outside the building, tour groups beelined toward nearby landmarks, headed for Byzantine-era Hagia Sophia or the Blue Mosque's slender minarets. I was seeking another sort of cultural immersion in the UNESCO-listed historic center: I had come to take a bath.
It's not that my hotel room lacked a shower. Visiting a hammam goes beyond hygiene, transcending the usual lather, rinse, repeat. With marble-clad rooms and soaring domes perforated by star-shaped windows, historic hammams are an exquisite part of İstanbul's living heritage.
Throughout the Ottoman era and beyond, baths were social hubs, especially for women. Friends swapped gossip, and mothers scouted potential partners for their eligible sons. While the baths are less central to İstanbul life than they once were, many brides still prepare for marriage by inviting friends for a hammam day. For travelers, visiting one is a chance to experience wellness traditions passed down through countless generations.
Centuries ago, the city had dozens of public baths. Today, just a handful of the oldest ones remain in use, a select few restored to their original beauty. Of these, Hürrem Sultan Hamamı stands out for the meticulous renovation of its interior, as well as a fascinating royal backstory featuring a trailblazing concubine.
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The concubine who would be queen
"With each of my favorite baths, there's one particular thing I love. At Hürrem, it's the history," said Elizabet Kurumlu, an İstanbul-based tour guide and co-host of the Türkiye episode in the streaming series "Perfect Sweat," which explores bathing traditions around the world.
The bath was unveiled in 1556 by Hürrem Sultan, a brilliant Ruthenian concubine. She arrived at the Ottoman court as an enslaved person then shocked an empire with her love marriage to Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent.
"You might say she was one of the earliest feminists," said Kurumlu. She noted that Hürrem's hammam broke precedent with its near-symmetrical design, wondering aloud if Hürrem herself might have made the choice to put men's and women's sections on more equal footing. It seems like a Hürrem thing to do. She was the first woman from outside the imperial lineage to commission buildings in İstanbul, and she financed projects from Jerusalem to Mecca. One of her mosques, called Haseki Sultan Cami, still stands in the city's Fatih neighborhood.
The projects were a flex, public symbols of her hard-won power and prestige.
Doubling down on legacy-building, Hürrem chose a location for her bath that was already rich in history, the site of the older, Byzantine-era Baths of Zeuxippus, which brimmed with elaborate statues before being destroyed in 532. A slab from Zeuxippus featuring a sea nymph is at the nearby İstanbul Archaeological Museums.
We don't know if Hürrem ever bathed at the public hammam she commissioned; she had access to sublime baths where she lived at nearby Topkapı Palace. But, like Zeuxippus before it, Hürrem Sultan's gift to the city would have been a magnet for travelers like me, Kurumlu explained, adding that visitors would have made a public bath one of their first stops after a long journey to the city.
The baths have seen a lot since then: A hammam until 1910, they later served as overflow housing for convicts from a nearby prison and became a Turkish carpet gallery. After yet another major renovation, they reopened to bathers in 2011. "Buildings hold on to their history," Kurumlu said. "You can feel the stories that happened here."
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Visiting a hammam in İstanbul
What's it like to visit Hürrem's namesake bath? It follows a classic Ottoman design with three rooms ranging from cool to steamy. The price of entry includes a 45-minute treatment of exfoliation and a "bubble massage" on a heated marble slab called a göbek taşi. When half a dozen bathers are stretched out on the göbek taşi, the room echoes with voices. Hammams have always been a social experience.
Seeking calm, however, I went to bathe first thing in the morning and had the place to myself. After padding in sandaled feet into the warmest room, I curled up on a heated marble shelf by a basin overflowing with water.
The hammam attendant, known as a tellak for men and natır for women, dipped a copper bowl into the basin and doused me, then scrubbed my limbs with a rough glove. While aficionados say the end result of visiting a hammam is profound relaxation, the exfoliation itself is vigorous-a brisk sloughing of dirt and skin, suds rinsed away with bowl after bowl of water.
Light filtered down from the white-plastered ceiling. I moved to the stone slab, its radiating heat warming me to the bone, as the attendant worked soap into a lofty pile of foam and massaged me with the bubbles.
Later, reclining on a low couch in the hammam's coolest room, I thought of the girl who made herself queen, shaping a city where her legacy endures. I sipped from a tiny cup of ruby-red spiced juice called sherbet, which has been a post-hammam restorative since ancient times, this one made with hibiscus, cinnamon, and cloves. My hair was swaddled in a turban of towels, my feet in a snowy pair of slippers. For a moment, I felt like royalty.
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How to do it
Want to visit Hürrem Sultan Hamamı? Read our guide for the best time to go, how much it costs, safety considerations, and more.
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Getting there
İstanbul's main point of entry for international travelers is İstanbul Airport (IST), 30 miles northwest of the historic Sultanahmet neighborhood where Hürrem Sultan Hamamı is located. Many domestic flights, and some international ones, use the smaller Sabiha Gökçen International Airport (SAW), which is 30 miles southeast of the city center. Leave the airport by taxi, metro, or the Havaist bus line that serves a handful of hubs around the city, but keep in mind that frequent traffic snarls slow travel time considerably.
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Jen Rose Smith is a writer living in Vermont's Green Mountains. Her reporting on travel and adventure spans six continents and has been published by National Geographic, The Washington Post, Condé Nast Traveler, CNN Travel, and many other outlets. Find more of her work at www.jenrosesmith.com.
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