Nalıncılar Baths

The Nalıncılar Baths are a historic public hammam in the Osmangazi district of Bursa, the first great capital of the Ottoman Empire in northwestern Turkey, where Sultan Orhan Gazi and his successors transformed a Byzantine provincial town into the first city of a new imperial culture. Bursa's hammam heritage is among the richest in Turkey, ranging from the ancient sulphur thermae of the Eski Kaplıca — whose thermal waters have been used since Roman times — to the grand double hammams of the imperial mosque complexes. The Nalıncılar Baths served the clog-makers quarter — nalıncılar being the craftsmen who made the wooden bath clogs (takunya) worn in hammams — in a city where artisanal guilds maintained their own neighbourhood bath traditions as part of a rich craft culture that has defined Bursa since its earliest Ottoman days.