Tabaklar Baths

The Tabaklar Baths (Tanner Quarter Baths) are historic public baths in Bergama — the ancient Pergamon — in İzmir Province, western Turkey, in the modern city that overlies one of antiquity's greatest capital cities and the birthplace of parchment (pergamon), named after the material the city developed when Egypt cut off papyrus supplies. Bergama's Ottoman quarter served the community of workers and craftsmen who settled around the great ancient acropolis, and its hammams served multiple neighbourhood guilds including the tabak (tanners) whose craft was a major industry in a city with abundant livestock and water from the Bakırçay River. The Tabaklar Baths formed part of the civic bathing infrastructure of a town whose layered history — from Attalid royal capital to Roman provincial powerhouse to Ottoman provincial town — makes it one of the most historically multidimensional sites in western Turkey.