Altunizade İsmail Paşa Baths

Altunizade İsmail Paşa Baths is a historic Ottoman hammam in the Altunizade neighborhood of Üsküdar on Istanbul's Asian shore — a district whose name 'Altunizade' (Son of the Gold Maker) recalls the wealthy financial families of the late Ottoman period who built elegant waterfront yalıs (wooden seaside mansions) along the Asian Bosphorus shore, creating one of Istanbul's most fashionable and historically distinctive residential districts. İsmail Paşa, the hammam's Ottoman patron, was likely one of the senior officials or local grandees of the Üsküdar district whose charitable endowment of a public bath served the Asian shore community with the essential institution of communal bathing while simultaneously commemorating the patron's piety and civic generosity in the Ottoman tradition. The Altunizade neighborhood's position on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus — looking across the strait toward the European minarets of Eminönü and the Grand Bazaar — gives this hammam a location of exceptional scenic beauty in one of Istanbul's most historically and architecturally interesting Anatolian districts.