Çemberlitaş Hamamı

The Çemberlitaş Hamamı in Istanbul is a historic bathhouse built in 1584 that has operated continuously for over 440 years. Commissioned by Nurbanu Sultan, a former Venetian captive who became the most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire, its profits funded the Atik Valide Mosque in Üsküdar. By 1752, it employed 58 male attendants, making it Istanbul's second-largest hamam, despite suffering partial dome destruction during 19th-century street works.

Istanbul · from the walk “Sultans, Spices & Hidden Streets” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Çemberlitaş Hamamı, Vezirhanı Cd. No:8, Fatih, İstanbul

Who commissioned the Çemberlitaş Hamamı in Istanbul?

You stand before one of the most extraordinary buildings in Istanbul... a bathhouse that has been washing this city's people for over four hundred and forty years, without a single day's interruption. This is the Chemberlitash Hamami.......... Built in fifteen eighty-four, this hamam sits right beside Divan Yolu, an ancient processional road that dates all the way back to the Byzantine era... a road that once led to Rome itself. But the real story here isn't about architecture. It's about the remarkable woman who ordered it built.......... Her name was Nurbanu Sultan. And according to the most widely accepted theory among historians, she was born Cecilia Venier Baffo... an illegitimate daughter of two noble Venetian families. Captured at the age of twelve when Ottoman forces seized the island of Paros in fifteen thirty-seven, she was taken as a slave into the imperial harem. But this girl from Venice would rise to become the Most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire.......... She became the beloved wife of Sultan Selim the Second and mother to his heir, Murad the Third. And here's the astonishing part. When Selim died in fifteen seventy-four, Nurbanu knew that rival princes could seize the throne while her son was far away, serving as governor in Manisa. So she hid her husband's Body... in an icebox... told absolutely NO One... and kept the Sultan's death a secret for twelve entire days, until Murad could race back to Constantinople and claim power.......... It worked. She became Valide Sultan, the Queen Mother, and effectively co-ruled the empire for nine years.......... Now, this bathhouse was her final commission. Its profits funded the enormous Atik Valide Mosque complex across the Bosphorus in Üsküdar. And it was a Huge financial success. Ottoman economic records show the Chemberlitash often ranked above shops, fields, and houses in the city's profit listings. By seventeen fifty-two, fifty-eight male attendants worked here, making it the second-largest bathhouse in all of Istanbul.......... But one dark chapter haunts these walls. In May of nineteen oh two, the authoritarian regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid the Second chose This bathhouse to burn thirty thousand books that had failed censorship... works by Montesquieu, Roussseau, and beloved Turkish writers like Namik KeMal. Imagine... the flames of knowledge, consumed inside a house of water.......... Look at how the street level has risen around the building over the centuries. You have to walk Down steps to enter now. That happened when nineteenth-century reformers widened the streets and installed sewers... actually demolishing part of the hamam's dome and forcing the women's section to close. And yet, through fires, earthquakes, empires rising and falling... the steam has never stopped rising here.

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