Hamam basics
What Is a Turkish Bath?
A Turkish bath is not a sauna with a different name. It is a bathing ritual built from four things — heat, water, a scrub and foam — and once you know them, the rest follows.
Updated
In short
The Turkish bath, or hamam, is a warm and humid bathing house: you are warmed through, scrubbed by an attendant with a rough mitt called a kese, washed in soap foam and rinsed. A sauna is hot and dry and a steam room is saturated with steam, but neither washes you; the kese and the foam are what make a hamam a hamam. Many visits, like ours in Alanya, also include a massage.
Warmth, water and marble
A hamam is a room built for washing. It is warm and wet rather than scorching, and it is usually lined with marble: a heated slab in the middle to lie on, and basins around the walls with running water for rinsing, poured over you with a metal bowl.
The warmth has a job to do. It relaxes you and gets you ready for what comes next — the scrub and the foam — which is why a visit always starts with heat and never with the scrub.
The two things only a hamam does
The kese is a coarse mitt, and also the name of the scrub done with it: an attendant works it firmly over your skin once you are warm. The foam — köpük in Turkish — comes after: a deep layer of soap foam laid over you and smoothed in by hand.
Those two, the kese and the foam, separate a hamam from a room that is merely hot. More about kese · more about the foam.
A washing place — and a social one
Bathing in company is an old custom in this part of the world, and under the Ottomans the hamam belonged to everyday social life: people went to be warmed, scrubbed and washed together, and to meet. They came as much for the company as for the washing.
Traditional hamams keep separate sections, and guests keep their swimwear on, with a peştemal over it: the thin wrap that belongs to the hamam as much as the marble does.
Hamam, sauna and steam room compared
| Turkish bath (hamam) | Sauna | Steam room | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The air | Warm and humid | Hot and dry | Warm and saturated with steam |
| What happens | Warming up, kese scrub, foam wash, rinse | You sit in the heat | You sit in the steam |
| Someone attends to you | Yes — an attendant does the kese and the foam | No | No |
| What you wear | Swimwear, with a peştemal over it | Varies | Varies |
A Turkish bath in Alanya, the way we book it
Our basic programme is the classic hamam in full: steam room and sauna, kese, köpük foam and a roughly 20-minute massage with aromatic oil, plus the hotel transfer both ways. See the programme and the price.