What to expect when visiting a Turkish bath

Hydrotherapy spas have been cropping up all over New York and Los Angeles, but the Turks have been steaming and stewing in hot water for a thousand years. At the Richmond Nua Spa on sublime Lake Sapanca—the Hamptons of Turkey—I hesitated before signing up for a full Turkish bath treatment. My previous hammam experience in Morocco was awful, involving six quivering naked ladies pretending to enjoy a brutal, communal scrubbing in a moldy underground spa dungeon. I hoped this one—in the birthplace of the ritual—wouldn’t be as mortifying.

Here’s what happened when I explored the traditional scrub-down.

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Step 1: Steam

Pre-hammam, I was advised to raise my body temperature a bit, so I waded into the Osman Steam Bath, a reproduction of those used six hundred years ago by sultans. It was heated to a lung-compressing 120 degrees, with 90 percent humidity. Gasping for breath, I forced myself to stay in there as long as possible to get the alleged health benefits—clear sinuses, debloating and improved circulation. Two minutes later, I crawled out bright red, glistening and ready for a bath. 

Step 2: Sluice

Kenon, my hamman attendant, was a large, hairy Turk who would soon be the only man (save for my husband and doctor) to see me naked in ten years. “I don’t speak English,” he said when we met. Fine by me. During the glory days of the Ottoman Empire, attendants in the sultan’s baths were strong and silent to the extreme, having been relieved of their tongues (as well as other key body parts). Kenon led me to a private (thank God) hammam antechamber and instructed me to strip and fix a thin cotton cloth called apeshtemal under my arms. Kenon wore one too, over his hips. I’m happy to report these attendants are no longer made to be eunuchs.

I entered the hammam, a 95-degree circular room with gray marble walls, a domed ceiling and an octagonal marble table in the center. I lay face-up on a towel on the heated slab. Kenon untied my peshtemal, leaving me completely exposed except for a tiny washcloth draped over my bits. I had a flash of “I’m naked here!” self-consciousness, but that dissolved when Kenon poured hot water from a copper bowl all over me.

Step 3: Exfoliation

Kenon put on a hand-woven course cotton mitt called a kese and scrubbed every inch of my body—and I do mean every inch. I thought I was clean going in, having showered and steamed beforehand, but Kenon sloughed off deeply embedded grime and rolls of old skin. The theory is, once the dead layer is removed, your pores are wide open and gushing out toxins. If nothing more, I lost a pound of withered cells (truly, it was appalling). The scrub—aggressive but relaxing—increased circulation to the surface of my skin, kick-starting new skin cell production. I rolled onto my belly and Kenon exfoliated my back. Bliss.