Yeşildere Baths

The Yeşildere Baths (Green Stream Baths) are a historic Ottoman hammam in Karaman District of Karaman Province in south-central Anatolia, in the city that was the heartland of the Karamanid principality and holds a unique place in Turkish cultural history as the city where the first official decree was issued in the Turkish language. Karaman's hammam heritage reflects the rich civic culture of a city that maintained sophisticated urban institutions both as the capital of the Karamanid principality and as an important Ottoman provincial centre following the dynasty's absorption into the empire in 1487. The Yeşildere Baths — named after a green stream that likely supplied their water — served the community of a historically significant Anatolian city where the Ottoman bath tradition built upon the foundations of the Karamanid civic culture that preceded it.