Bath Culture in Ankara from the Roman Baths to Karacabey

The terrace you climb from Çankırı Caddesi by a few steps is in fact a mound; Remzi Oğuz Arık's dig of 1937 found Phrygian and Roman layers here. The baths themselves were uncovered between 1937 and 1943 by excavations for the Turkish Historical Society, directed by Hamit Zübeyr Koşay with Necati Dolunay in charge of the fieldwork; Mahmut Akok studied the architectural remains and drew the reconstruction plans. Because the oldest coins from the pool floor belong to Caracalla, the building is dated to 212-217; it is thought to have been dedicated to Asklepios and counts among the largest Roman baths anywhere.

Read the covered rooms in order: the changing room (apodyterium), the cold room with its swimming pool (frigidarium), the warm room (tepidarium), the hot room (caldarium) and the sweating room (sudatorium). The most rewarding thing to look at is under the floor. Hot air circulated beneath a pavement carried on brick piers; this hypocaust arrangement continued in Ottoman baths, and you will meet the same idea at the next stops. The palaestra beside it, the exercise court of 95 by 95 metres, is now the open-air museum. Laid out between 1997 and 2001, it holds close to a thousand pieces: grave stelae on the south and west wings, inscribed blocks and milestones on the north, altars on the east, sarcophagi and lion statues in the middle.

Walk with two facts in mind: the water came from the foothills of Elmadağ through stone pipes, and in the Byzantine period stones from the baths were reused to repair the citadel walls; the reused blocks up in the castle came from here. There is no shade, so come early. Check the museum's official page for closed days and hours.

Source: ASKİ, Ankara Hamamları ve Kaplıcaları; TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Ankara maddesi; Wikipedia.

This double bath stands to the left of a stepped lane off Anafartalar Caddesi, next to the old commerce high school, and carries no inscription; the endowment deed tells us who built it. İshak Paşa, grand vizier under Mehmed II and Bayezid II, set aside 142,500 dirhems for his steward Sinan Bey to build a bath in Ankara whose income would feed the paşa's soup kitchen in his home town of İnegöl; Sinan Bey built it in the İskender Taşı quarter, and the paşa's children confirm this in an addendum to the deed of 1486. In the Ankara endowment register of 1521-22 the bath brings in 19,000 akçe a year, the highest of any bath in town. In 1673 the Ankara-born Şeyhülislam Mehmed Emin Efendi bought it and endowed it to the Zincirli Mosque. Today it belongs to the General Directorate of Foundations and still operates.

The men's section is on the north, the women's on the south. The men's dressing hall is entered through the arched door on the north side; two tiers of wooden cabins surround an octagonal pool under a lath-and-plaster dome. The warm room has an oval dome, with the toilet on the right and the shaving room on the left. In the hot room a square marble platform sits between three domed iwans and three corner cells; the cell to the left of the entrance holds a deep plunge pool. The women's hot room is the larger of the two. Even if you do not go in, look at the cut-stone cladding of the west facade and the staggered stonework around the windows.

From here walk down Denizciler Caddesi to İtfaiye Meydanı. Opposite Gazi Lisesi stands the Eyne Bey Hamamı, the oldest Ottoman bath in the city centre: according to its deed of 1405 it was built by İne Bey, a subaşı of Murad I, with Melike Hatun contributing a thousand gold eşrefi. It is a single bath and today serves men only; the reused Corinthian columns of its dressing hall cannot be seen from the street, so for those not going in it is a few minutes' pause in front of the facade.

Source: ASKİ, Ankara Hamamları ve Kaplıcaları; Wikipedia; Kültür Envanteri (Eynebey).

This double bath on Talatpaşa Bulvarı is the building that gave the neighbourhood its name. Ottoman documents call the area Karaca Bey Hamamı Meydanı and Hamamarkası Meydanı, the squares in front of and behind the bath; in time only Hamamönü, the front, survived. There is no building inscription. According to an endowment deed of 1444 the bath was built by Karaca Bey b. Abdullah, governor-general of Anatolia under Murad II and son-in-law of Mehmed I, before he fell at the Battle of Varna that same year. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam dates the complex to 1428, other sources to 1440-41; the bath must have been finished somewhere between. Its purpose was income: Karaca Bey endowed the bath and two neighbouring gardens to cover the expenses of his dervish-lodge mosque up at Hacet Tepesi, known as the İmaret Camii.

The men's section is entered from the south door on the street, the women's from a door on the west side. The dressing halls have mud-brick walls and pyramidal roofs with a lantern in the middle; inside, wooden cabins line the walls and fountain pools stand in the centre. The bathing rooms are clad in marble on walls and floor, lit from above through round, polygonal and star-shaped openings in the domes. The men's hot room follows the classic four-iwan plan with an octagonal marble platform in the middle and muqarnas squinches carrying the dome; even the rim of the private cell's dome is worked in muqarnas. The women's dressing hall is larger and its hot room symmetrical. The bathing section was repaired in 1979 and the dressing hall a few years later; the encyclopaedia also lists repairs in the late 1980s and in 2003-2005. Both sections are in use today.

A good traveller does not hurry here: sit in the warm room first, sweat on the hot platform, ask the tellak or natır for a scrub, then go back to the cool hall to rest. Peştemal and towel are provided by the bath. Phone ahead for hours and for the women's section's daily schedule.

Source: ASKİ, Ankara Hamamları ve Kaplıcaları; TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Karaca Bey Camii ve Külliyesi maddesi; Wikipedia.

Behind the bath, at the spot called Hacet Tepesi, stands Karaca Bey's complex. Known in endowment records as the Karaca Beğ İmareti, it consisted of a mosque, a soup kitchen, a tomb, a fountain, water channels and the double bath; the mosque, tomb, fountain and bath have survived. On this route look less at the mosque's architecture than at how the complex worked. According to the Ankara endowment register of 1521-22 the foundation earned 26,760 akçe a year, and the list includes, besides the bath, a soap works next to it, a pavilion plot on Sultan Meydanı, gardens and farmland. In other words the rent of the bath below kept the kitchen's cauldron boiling up here; the bath was the charity's treasury. That is also why Ottoman towns had so many baths.

Karaca Bey lies in the octagonal tomb northwest of the mosque; the Arabic inscription over the door gives the year 848 (1444). His body was brought from Varna to Ankara, the city he had governed. Look from outside at the coloured tile decoration of the minaret and its octagonal upper section; the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam names Sinaneddin Ahmed b. Ebu Bekir el-Müşeymeş as the architect of the complex and lists repairs in 1938, 1947, 1965, 1989 and 2003-2005.

The mosque is in use for worship. Stay out during prayer times or keep it brief, take off your shoes, cover shoulders and knees, keep quiet; the tomb is part of the mosque and needs no separate visit. If you recall that the Karaca Bey family lived in Ankara at the Köşk Yeri near Gazi Lisesi and the Eyne Bey Hamamı, the link between the square you passed a little while ago and this hill is complete.

Source: TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Karaca Bey Camii ve Külliyesi maddesi; ASKİ, Ankara Hamamları ve Kaplıcaları.

The route ends in the neighbourhood that took its name from the bath. Hamamönü grew up in the thirteenth century around the markets at the foot of the citadel, prospered in the fifteenth and sixteenth on mohair weaving, and suffered in the Celali disturbances of the seventeenth. What you see today is nineteenth-century domestic architecture: about three hundred buildings, eight of them registered monuments and twenty-two listed as traditional houses. A conservation decision came in 1997, planning began in 1999, and in 2006 the Altındağ municipality started a street rehabilitation programme on İnci and Dutlu streets. Houses still standing were restored; ruins were expropriated and rebuilt in Ankara stone, timber and brick, so not every facade you see is old, and some are reconstructions. The twenty-two houses of Sanat Sokağı have been allocated to artists since 2010, workshops upstairs and galleries below.

This is the right place for a walk after the bath. Enter from Talatpaşa Bulvarı and turn into the cobbled lanes; as long as the minaret of Karacabey Camii stays in sight you will not get lost. The Taceddin Lodge, where Mehmet Akif Ersoy wrote the national anthem, is also inside the neighbourhood; drop in on the museum house if you have time. Ramadan evenings are busy with events and weekends are crowded; for a quiet walk choose a weekday afternoon.

Getting back is easy: EGO buses towards Ulus and Kızılay stop on Talatpaşa Bulvarı, and Ulus is walkable. Close the day with this thought: the square you look at from the bath door was laid out six hundred years ago as the income source of a charitable foundation, and the neighbourhood still carries the bath's name. In Ankara, bath culture is not a matter of a building but of a whole quarter.

Source: Wikipedia, Hamamönü; Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi; Altındağ Belediyesi, Hamamönü Sanat Sokağı.