Seymenlik Baths

The Seymenlik Baths are a historic Ottoman hammam in Milas District of Muğla Province in southwestern Turkey, in the ancient Carian territory whose Hecatomnid rulers built some of the most ambitious bath and sanctuary complexes of the Greek world. The name Seymenlik refers to the seymen — a category of local militia or traditional guard in Ottoman provincial organisation — suggesting these baths served the quarter associated with this community function in the civic geography of Milas. The baths stand within the remarkable bathing heritage of the Carian region, where the tradition of communal bathing extends from the ancient spring sanctuaries of Labraunda and the thermae of Mylasa and Halicarnassus through Byzantine and Ottoman periods to the present day.