Şengül Baths

Şengül Baths is a historic Ottoman hammam in Ankara — one of the oldest surviving hammams in the Turkish capital, dating from the fifteenth or sixteenth century and operating continuously in the ancient Ulus quarter of the city near the old citadel — that survived the transformation of Ankara from a provincial Anatolian market town into the capital of the Turkish Republic, when Atatürk's urban planners built a modernist new city around the old hammam while the Ulus quarter preserved something of the Ottoman character that the Republican reforms elsewhere swept away. The hammam provides the classical Ottoman bathing sequence of camekan, ılıklık, and hararet in a historic building that represents one of Ankara's most direct architectural connections to its pre-Republican Ottoman past, continuing to serve local residents and visitors with the traditional kese exfoliation and foam massage in a city where the memory of Ottoman bathing culture is otherwise largely subsumed by the modernist identity of the Republican capital. Şengül Baths' survival and continued operation in a rapidly modernizing city makes it one of Ankara's most historically significant and culturally important surviving Ottoman monuments.