Hamam to Mutfak to Mosaics

After our visit to the Gaziantep Castle, we wandered around the downtown streets, visiting a couple of boutique museums.

The first one we went to was the Hamam Museum, which has exhibits describing Turkey’s hamam culture. The museum is housed in the Paşa Hamamı, a public bathhouse that is thought to date back to 1577, and which was built in the Ottoman style.

These bathhouses consisted of a cold bath, a warm bath, and a hot bath, and had a variety of other rooms that served as changing rooms, a water reservoir, etc. Some had men’s and women’s sections, while others had specifics days of the week designated for the different genders. They also served as a place for get togethers where people could eat, chat, and otherwise socialize during the extensive bathing rituals.

Not far down the street was the second museum we visited — Mutfak Museum. The literal translation is the kitchen museum, but its purpose is to explore the culinary culture of Gaziantep. I thought this was especially appropriate since the city was inducted into the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2015 for its gastronomic history and has many trademarked dishes that are known around the world.

Our last stop before lunch came about as a happenstance as we were walking to the café where we planned to take our midday break. You all know my interest in murals and mosaics, so it should come as no surprise that we stopped at what I thought was a center for mosaics along the way.

Inside, we were welcomed by Gülçin Sökücü, coordinator of the center and a mosaic artist of some renown. She gave us a brief description of the process of making a mosaic piece, including a demonstration of how natural stones and rocks are chipped into appropriate sizes. We walked away with a much deeper appreciation of the work that must have gone into the creation of the room-sized floor and wall mosaics that we’d seen at the Zeugma Mosaic Museum yesterday.Read more