Paşa Baths of Bitlis

The Paşa Baths of Bitlis are a historic Ottoman hammam in Bitlis District of Bitlis Province in the rugged mountains of eastern Turkey, in a remarkable medieval city whose stone houses cascade down the walls of a deep gorge where two streams meet below the famous Bitlis Castle. Bitlis was one of the most important cities of eastern Anatolia throughout the medieval and Ottoman periods, serving as the capital of the semi-autonomous Bitlis Emirate under the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, and its hammam tradition reflected the sophisticated urban culture of a city that combined Kurdish, Turkish, and Armenian influences in a distinctive mountain civilisation. The Paşa Baths served the community of a city that produced some of the finest examples of Kurdish-Ottoman architectural fusion in the eastern Anatolian highlands, where the hammam tradition thrived in a cold mountain climate that made heated public bathing especially prized.