Guide
The Turkish Bath Museum at Beypazarı was set up to document the culture of the hamam, display it, and pass it on — to preserve as a whole a tradition that sits in both universal and social memory. The museum describes itself as the first and only museum in Türkiye on the subject of the Turkish bath and the culture of washing, both in what it covers and in the museum techniques it uses.
Besides showing the architecture of baths and the objects used in washing, it interprets the culture through the place the hamam held in ceremonial life: there is a display on the bridal henna bath, and reconstructions of the hamam ana and hamam baba, the women and men who ran the bath, and of the kulhanbeyi, the stoker. The museum was founded with the support of the Ankara Development Agency and the Living Museum, and its founder is Dr Sema Demir, who teaches folklore museology at the faculty of letters of Gazi University. It is on Yenice Sokak in the Cumhuriyet quarter of Beypazarı.
