Getting naked here is the best $175 I’ve ever spent

I’m lying almost naked on a warm marble platform being offered up to the gods of sensuality.

The room is misted with gentle steam and framed by a magnificent marble dome. Through cut-outs of stars in the roof, the brilliant Istanbul sunlight filters into the bathhouse. I cover my eyes with my arm it’s so bright.

I’ve been soaped and scrubbed in bathhouses in Morocco and Spain many times, yet I’d never experienced a typical hammam in Turkey until this moment.

The Cinili Hamam has exquisitely beautiful carved marble walls.

Perhaps this one isn’t so typical, though. Cinili Hamam in Zeyrek, an ancient quarter of Istanbul, is over five centuries old. Its authenticity is not in question, but its grand proportions and exquisitely beautiful carved marble walls and bathing area mean it’s a glamorous big sister to the more modest hammams scattered around the city in backstreets, mosques and bazaars.

Originally built in 1530-1540 and containing both men’s and women’s sections, it has been expensively restored over 13 years by the Marmara Hotel Group, which owns several hotels in Turkey and one in New York.

The Cinili Hamam Museum displays recovered artefacts, such as oil lamps and combs.

The ancient cisterns and furnace that provided the hot water for washing and steaming have been excavated. They can be visited as part of the wonderful new Hammam Museum next door, which relates the history and rituals of public hammams in Turkey through displays of recovered artefacts, such as oil lamps and combs, and colourful animations.

The inner walls of the hammam were once completely covered in a unique kind of blue and white tile made in Iznik in 37 different patterns. Around 3000 remnants of those tiles were uncovered during the excavation and these are exhibited in long cases.

On another floor, dozens of pairs of nalins, tall wooden clogs often encrusted with mother of pearl or precious metals, are displayed like a platoon of fashionistas marching off to a nightclub.

Luckily, I’m not asked to put on a 10-centimetre high clog to enter the inner sanctum of the hammam. Slippers will do.

The vestiary or “cold” room is the welcoming space, a domed chamber two storeys high lined with comfortable striped days beds, and a marble fountain in its centre. It’s very chic, with alcoves featuring fragments of found murals. While I sit at a low table on a stool to fill out the relevant forms, I’m offered a glass of rose-scented cordial.

Next, I’m sent upstairs to change into a robe and leave my things in a locker. I’m then taken to an antechamber to meet my natir, or woman’s therapist, Aysun. Before the treatment, I sit on marble steps while I’m sluiced with warm water from a fountain. Then I’m carefully taken to the heated marble platform and left to lightly steam under the starry dome. It’s not too hot at all.

There are two other naked women on the slab. Although the Sufi mystics used hammams for spiritual purification, they were generally secular spaces that provided a social connection for women, who were marginalised in everyday life. Today, they’re often the venue for hen’s parties.

I imagined that Turkish hammam treatments were so vigorous that they took off several layers of skin. Aysun uses an exfoliating glove, but she’s not brutal at all. I’m also surprised that the treatment happens with me sitting on a stool rather than lying down.

Bubble time.

Why did I not know about the bubbles? I’m fascinated to watch Aysun take a cloth and repeatedly dip it in a bucket of pink liquid, then shake it. Like magic, it fills with frothy bubbles, and they’re squeezed all over me. I must look like the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters, except pink.

This bubbling is repeated several times, in between warm water showers, then my hair is washed and my feet massaged. I’m dried carefully, wrapped in towels, and sent back out to the warm “cold” room for mint tea and recovery.

If public nakedness, pink bubbles and repeated sluicing with warm water doesn’t do it for you, consider visiting the museum anyway. It’s engrossing.

For me, the hammam experience was the best €105 ($175) I’ve ever spent.

THE DETAILS

VISIT
Cinili Hamam and museum is open Tuesday to Sunday. Treatments start at €105. Museum entry is about $6. My transfer from the Four Seasons Hotel at Sultanahmet was complimentary (fourseasons.com/Istanbul) so do ask if this service is available for your hotel. See zeyrekcinilihamam.com

The writer was in Istanbul as a guest of Four Seasons and paid for her treatment at the hammam.