Hürrem Sultan commissioned it, and her architect Mimar Sinan built it: two mirrored halves, one for men and one for women, 75 metres of marble and domes. It was a bath until 1910. Then the doors closed. At times it was a prison, a paper store, a petrol depot. After a repair in 1957-58 it became a carpet shop, for decades. In 2007 the city decided it was a bath again: three years of restoration, eleven million dollars.
In 2011, the water came back.
In Finland, an old sauna also becomes a storeroom: skis, paint, a bicycle. But the stove waits.
What is stored in your old sauna?
Sources: Wikipedia, Hagia Sophia Hurrem Sultan Bathhouse (en) and Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı (tr); the bath's own history page (2015). The pictures are our drawings, not photographs.
Sounds: Freesound (CC0): ivolipa, BeroundSound, SpliceSound, Vrymaa, mohomran, eddies2000, indirect, wwstudioswastaken, brunoboselli; Mökkiperikunnalle sounds (CC0).
