By Navitas Spa & SportsPublished: 25 August 20261 min read
At a glance
The Turkish bath descends from the Roman thermae by way of the Byzantine bath: the Ottomans kept the sequence of warm, hot and cool rooms, replaced the plunge pool with running water and a heated marble platform, and made the hamam a civic institution attached to mosques and markets. The ritual of warmth, scrub and foam has been performed essentially unchanged for five centuries.
Rome and Byzantium
Roman baths moved bathers through rooms of rising temperature — tepidarium, caldarium, then the cold frigidarium — around heated floors. Byzantine Constantinople inherited the buildings and the habit. When the Ottomans took the city in 1453 they found a bathing culture already a thousand years old.
The Ottoman hamam
Islamic ritual washing favours running water over still pools, so the Ottoman bath dropped the plunge and kept the heat: a domed hot room with a raised marble göbek taşı at its centre and kurna basins along the walls, fed by hot and cold taps. Mimar Sinan, the great architect of the 16th century, built dozens, including the Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı beside Hagia Sophia. Baths were attached to mosques, markets and palaces and paid for their upkeep; they hosted bridal hamams, celebrations and the city's gossip.
Into the spa
Public baths declined as homes gained plumbing, then returned as heritage and as spa. The ritual that survived is precise — warmth, kese, köpük, rinse — and it is the one performed at Navitas Spa in the purpose-built marble hammam of Hilton Istanbul Airport, a few minutes from the runway of Europe's second-busiest airport.
Frequently asked questions
Which are the most famous historic hamams in Istanbul?
Çemberlitaş, Cağaloğlu, Kılıç Ali Paşa and the Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı, among others — all in the old city, about an hour's drive from the airport.
Is the airport hammam historic?
No — it was built new for the hotel. The ritual is the historic part.