# In 1556, the sultan's wife built a bath beside Hagia Sophia, and for about a hundred years it was everything except a bath.

- Series: [Saunantakaa](https://miu.fm/saunantakaa.md)
- Premieres: 2026-11-03
- Page: https://miu.fm/saunantakaa/in-1556-the-sultan-s-wife-built-a-bath-beside-hagia-sophia

## Story

In 1556, the sultan's wife built a bath beside Hagia Sophia, and for about a hundred years it was everything except a bath.

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).

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