John Naish goes to Istanbul Turkey to try a good old-fashioned Turkish bath. He shares his experience in an article in The Times. He visited the historic Cagaloglu Hamam where he ordered the “pummeling full-body massage”. And pummeling is precisely what you get, he writes.
The public bath culture was originally started by the Romans, the Byzantines picked up the tradition and passed it on to the Turks. Hamams were built to satisfy the Koran’s demand for cleanliness and the Oriental desire for bodily pleasure and architectural beauty. The Cagaloglu Hamam is supposedly the oldest still working hamam in Istanbul. The building is an architectural marvel of classical pillars and domes, built by Sultan Mehmen I as a gift to the city in 1741.
“Now, here’s me, wearing only a skimpy, slippery towel, alone in a bath-house with a muscular guy wearing a Freddie Mercury ‘tache and bearing a bucket of hot soapy water. And now there’s you, thinking exactly the same as I was. Such schoolboy phobias were dispelled by his first wrestler’s grab of my arm. Ouch. This was workmanlike, everyday stuff to him, so I had better settle into it – and try not to flinch. After 15 minutes spent lying on a boiling wet marble floor having my limbs, torso, fingers, toes and deep musculature expertly wrenched, twisted, pulled, scrubbed, thumped and kneaded, I had reached another plateau of consciousness, a strange, placid place where resignation had displaced all resistance.”
There is also a separate side for women. The hamam is open every day from 8am to 10pm (ladies 8am to 8pm). A “complete bath service” will cost you €20 euros, and a “complete Oriental luxury service” €10 more.