-
News
Sights of Interest in Greece
-
Bath House of the Winds
10-06-2013 18:27The Bath House of the Winds is located between the streets Kyrristou and Lisiou in the district of Plaka in Athens, near the Tower of the Winds and the Roman Forum. It is the only public bath of Athens surviving at the present days, dating back from the first period of Ottoman rule in Greece.
In the first building phase at the time of Turkish domination, the Bath-house in Kyrristou Street was a single bath, comprising changing rooms and a tepid and hot room. It operated at separate times for men and women. It was known as the Abid Efendi hammam, and the exact date when it was built is unknown but it is probably in 1501. According to the Turkish traveller Evliyia Celebi, who visited Athens in 1667, there were “three pleasant hammams” in the city.
The bath was damaged during the Greek Revolution in 1827 but during the reign of King Otto it was repaired whilst adding and changing rooms to the Kyrristou street with neoclassical elements in the facade. In the second building phase, about 1870, the character of the Bath-house changed. Through the additional of new rooms and the conversion of old ones, it was converted into a double baths with separate wings for men and women, each with a changing room with a mezzanine, a tepid room and a hot room. An ancillary building contained individual baths, known as “European baths”.
The principal bathing areas with the domes are the most interesting parts of the building, which has largely kept its original form. Small glass holes allowing the light to penetrate have been opened in the domes. At some points the floor is also made of glass, allowing visitors to see the lower level where hot air circulated through a network of earthenware pipes, heating up the floor and walls. The building had an underground furnace, from where the hot air generated by the fuel, was channelled to the hypocausts, and also by a water cistern and the ancillary rooms of the Baths.
It operated for over three hundred years from its foundation in the first years of the Turkish domination, until 1965, when it was transferred to the Ministry of Culture. The Ministry saw to its restoration and then in 1984 it was ceded to the Museum of Greek Folk Art. The study for the restoration of the monument and its adaptation as a museum was completed in 1989-1990, under the offices of the Directorate for Cultural Amenity buildings. In 1998 the building was handed over to the Museum of Greek Folk Art. Since 1999, when restoration was completed, it has been a branch of the Museum of Greek Folk Art and operates as a museum devoted to the theme of historical views of bodily cleanliness, care, and beautification.
The museum’s permanent exhibition will include copperplates with scenes from the life in public bathhouses, explanatory panels, and information on ancient, Roman, Byzantine and Turkish bathhouses in Greece.
-
Top bews!
-
Relative articles