From the Galata Bridge to Haghia Sophia - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 27

they played in the life of the city. Since only the very wealthiest
Ottoman homes were equipped with private baths, the vast majority
of Stamboullus for centuries used the hamams of the city to cleanse
and purify themselves. For many of the poorer people of modern
Istanbul the hamam is still the only place where they can bathe.
Turkish hamams are the direct descendants of the baths of
ancient Rome and are built to the same general plan. Ordinarily,
a hamam has three distinct sections. The first is the camekân, the
Roman apoditarium, which is used as a reception and dressing room,
and where one recovers and relaxes after the bath. Next comes the
soğukluk, or tepidarium, a chamber of intermediate temperature
which serves as an ante-room to the bath, keeping the cold air out on
one side and the hot air in on the other. Finally there is the hararet, or
steam-room, anciently called the calidarium. In Turkish baths the first
of these areas, the camekân, is the most monumental. It is typically
a vast square room covered by a dome on pendentives or conches,
with an elaborate fountain in the centre; around the walls is a raised
platform where the bathers undress and leave their clothes. The
soğukluk is almost always a mere passageway, which usually contains
the lavatories. In Cağaloğlu, as in most hamams, the most elaborate
chamber is the hararet. Here there is an open cruciform area, with a
central dome supported by a circlet of columns and with domed side-
chambers in the arms of the cross. In the centre there is a large marble
platform, the göbektaşı, or belly-stone, which is heated from the
furnace room below. The patrons lie on the belly-stone to sweat and
be massaged before bathing at one of the wall-fountains in the side-
chambers. The light in the hararet is dim and shimmering, difusing
down through the steam from the constellation of little glass windows
in the dome. Lying on the hot belly-stone, under the glittering dome,
and lazily observing the mists of vapour condensing into pearls of
moisture on the marble columns, one has the voluptuous feeling of
being in an undersea palace, in which everyone is his own sultan.
Cağaloğlu, like many of the larger hamams in Istanbul, is a double
bath, with separate establishments for men and women. In the smaller
hamams there is but a single bath and the two sexes are assigned
diferent days for their use. In the days of old Stamboul, when Muslim