Bath house of the Haseki Hürrem Sultan
The bath house of the Haseki Hürrem Sultan ( Turkish Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı ) is a bath house ( hammam ) in Istanbul. It was built in 1556 in the immediate vicinity of Hagia Sophia in the Fatih district of the main consort ( Haseki Sultan ) Sultan Suleyman I , Hürrem (around 1500–1506 to 1558), who was known in Europe under the name Roxelane . The building was designed by the Ottoman master architect Sinan .
Building history
The building was built over the Byzantine Zeuxippos baths , which had stood in this place until at least 1536. The floor plan of today's free-standing building is determined by the space available at the time of its construction. In 1917 the entrance hall to the men's department had to be restored. After further renovations in 1957-58, a carpet gallery was located there until 2007, which was maintained by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. From 2008 the building was restored again and is now open again as a bathhouse.
Building description
The bath house of the Haseki Hürrem Sultan is located immediately southwest of Hagia Sophia and northeast of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque . Between Hagia Sophia and the bath there is a free space, the former Augusteion. In 1850 the Darülfünun University building was erected behind the bathhouse . Originally, the bath was followed by dense buildings with wooden houses that burned down at the beginning of the 20th century. A tree-planted boulevard was built in their place, which in turn was converted into a park with a large round water basin in 1939.
The 75 m long building is built in the style of a classic Ottoman bathhouse and has two sections for women and men symmetrically arranged along the longitudinal axis from northeast to southwest. In the north is the men's bath, in the south the women's bath. The outer walls of the men's changing room consist alternately of a layer of stone (Ashlar) and two layers of brick , while the rest of the building is made of rough stone.
The building has two separate entrances, one for men in the north and one for women in the west. The men's entrance is opposite the large apse of Hagia Sophia. Unusually for Ottoman architecture, the men's bath has a stoa (vestibule) with a central dome over the middle of the front. The roofs of the dome and stoa are made of tiles and covered with lead sheets. The pointed arch of the monumental entrance door is decorated with a palmette and a golden inscription on a green background. The men's locker room has four pointed arched windows with colored glass in the facade, the women's locker room has three.
Each section consists of three interconnected rooms, the changing room (soyunmalık) , a cool room ( soğukluk , frigidarium ) and a hot room ( sıcaklık , caldarium ). The hot rooms in both parts are right next to each other, while the changing rooms are at opposite ends of the structure.
From the vestibule you get directly into the men's square changing room. This has a surrounding marble bench. In the middle there is a fountain. The room is vaulted by a dome crowned with a lantern , which frames a frieze of zigzag-shaped leaves in the Ablaq technique, alternately made of light and dark stone. The dome has ogival niches on all four sides. On one side of the cool room, vaulted by three domes, there are latrines, on the opposite side there are other rooms. A door leads into the octagonal hot room. Its axis is shifted slightly to the north to make room for the ovens ( külhan ) on the south side. Iwane with a fountain face each other on all four sides . There are two fountains in the entrance area and three fountains in each of the other ivans. In the corners there are four small chambers for spiritual contemplation ( halvet ) , each with a small dome decorated with stalactites ( muqarnas ) . Small window openings in the domes are the only source of light. The plastered walls are clad with marble slabs as tall as a man. The floor is laid out in marble using the opus sectile technique. In the middle of the hot room is a large octagonal marble table, the göbek taşı (literally: belly stone), on which the bathers can rest. The large dome rests on the octagonal walls and has small glass windows that bathe the room in dim light. The women's rooms are built in the same way, but a little smaller.
literature
- Godfrey Goodwin: A History of Ottoman Architecture . Thames and Hudson, London 1971, ISBN 978-0-500-27429-3 , pp. 248-249 .
Web links
- Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı on Archnet.com , accessed May 6, 2018
- Bathhouse website , accessed May 6, 2018
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı on Archnet.com , accessed May 6, 2018
- ↑ Haseki Hamamı on Istanbul.net.tr , accessed May 2, 2018
- ^ A b c d Godfrey Goodwin: A History of Ottoman Architecture . Thames and Hudson, London 1971, ISBN 978-0-500-27429-3 , pp. 248-249 .
Coordinates: 41 ° 0 ′ 26.4 " N , 28 ° 58 ′ 45.4" E