Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Ottoman hammams are significant heritage buildings that encompass both tangible and intangible cultural values, having historically shaped social life, urban space, and collective memory. Since the early 20th century, many hammams in Istanbul have lost their original function and fallen into ruin due to rising operational costs, infrastructural and hygiene transformations, socio-cultural changes, natural hazards, fragmented ownership, and rapid urban development. This study examines five ruinedOttoman hammams in Istanbul through a context-sensitive, decision-oriented, and comparative framework, identifying conservation strategies tailored to different physical, urban, and administrative conditions. The analysis combines archival research and field observations across five evaluation criteria—physical integrity, urban context and public visibility, ownership and management structure, key conservation issues, and intervention priority—and interprets the findings across the caseswithout numerical scoring or weighting. Findings indicate that hammams surviving only as fragmented remains require minimal and reversible interventions, the stabilization of extant elements, and interpretive measures to convey their historical and cultural context. In contrast, partially standing hammams demand a more active conservation approach, prioritizing structural stabilization, selective restoration, controlled reuse where feasible, the enhancement of public visibility, andreintegration into the urban fabric. The study demonstrates that ruined hammams are not merely lost structures but cultural heritage assets that enable the development of context-sensitive, flexible, and sustainable conservation strategies. The proposed framework provides a decision-support methodology applicable not only to the Istanbul examples but also to similarly ruined hammams across Anatolia and other abandoned public heritage buildings, offering guidance for sustainableheritage management and context-appropriate conservation.
DOI: 10.67288/jah.1832373
Author: Zeynep Tanrıverdi
Institution: Fatih Sultan Mehmet Waqf University
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7204198090