Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, Istanbul, Türkiye,
In Turkish, “çinili” translates to “tiled bath house.”
Mrs Koza Gureli Yazgan acquired an abandoned hamam in Istanbul’s historic yet overlooked Zeyrek district in 2010.
While freshening the place up, she kept unearthing priceless artifacts from Ottoman, Byzantine, and Roman times, soon discovering fragments of more than 3,000 vivid turquoise-blue ceramic tiles. More than 10,000 such tiles once adorned the building’s interior until a Parisian dealer sold the tiles to museums and private collectors around Europe as the hamam sat dormant.
After more than 13 years of conservation, which involved restoring the tiles and wall paintings dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, Mrs Gureli Yazgan is gearing up to reopen Çinili as a contemporary art venue on September 30.
A museum dedicated to Byzantine cisterns will occupy the lower levels, which feature newly uncovered wall carvings of boats suspected to have been made by slaves. When the baths aren’t offering full-service spa services, they’ll host a rotating art program that glimmers under the domed roof’s array of crescent-shaped skylights.
