 The hammams in the Ottoman culture started out as structural elements serving as adding to mosques, though quickly evolved into institutions and eventually with the works of the Ottoman architect Sinan, into monumental structural complexes, the finest example being the Çemberlitaş Hammam in Istanbul, built in 1584.
A typical hammam consists of three interconnected basic rooms similar to its Roman ancestors: the sıcaklık (or hararet -caldarium) which is the hot room, the warm room (tepidarium) which is the intermediate room and the soğukluk which is the cool room.
The sıcaklık typically has a large dome ornamented with small glass windows that create a half-light and contains a large marble stone at the center that the customers lie on and niches with fountains in the corners. This room is intended for soaking up steam and getting scrub massages. Tepidarium, the warm room, is used for washing up with soap and water and the soğukluk is to relax, dress up, have a refreshing drink, tea and where possible, a brisk nap in private cubicles after the massage. Some of the hammams in Istanbul also include mikvehs, ritual cleansing baths for Jewish women.
The hammam, like its early precursors, Roman thermae, is not special to men only - hammam complexes generally contain separate quarters for men and women. Being social centers, in the Ottoman Empire, hammams were quite abundant, and were built in almost every Ottoman city. Integrated in every day life, they were centers of social gatherings, populated on almost every occasion with traditional entertainment: dancing and food, especially in the women's quarters, and ceremonies, such as before weddings, high-holidays, celebrating newborns, beauty trips etc.
There existed special accessories some of which still are being used at modern hammams: for example the peştemal (a special cloth of silk and/or cotton, to cover the body, like pareos), nalın (special wooden clogs that would prevent the wearer from slipping on the wet floor, often decorated with silver or mother-of-pearl), kese (a rough mitt for massage), and sometimes jewel boxes, gilded soap boxes, mirrors, henna bowls, perfume bottles.
 Tellak (staff)
The masseurs in the baths (tellaks), who were mostly young boys, traditionally helped clients to wash by soaping and scrubbing their bodies. Their functions were not just as washers, but sex workers as well. As it is known, from the texts left by Ottoman authors, who they were, their prices, how many times they could bring their customers to orgasm and the details of their sexual practices. They were employed from among the ranks of the non-Muslim subject nations of the Turkish Empire, such as Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Albanians, Bulgarians, Roma and others.
Sometimes the relationship between a tellak and his client became deeply personal. It is proved that in the mid-18th century, a janissary, an elite soldier in the Ottoman army, also often of European descent, had a tellak for a lover. As this tellak was abducted by the men of another regiment and passed to the use of their commander, a days-long battle between the two janissary regiments arose, which was ceased only when the Sultan ordered the unlucky tellak hanged. After the defeat and partition of the Ottoman Empire, in the quickly westernizing Turkish republic the tellak boys lost their sexual touch, and now the tellak's role is filled by adult attendants who specialize in more commonplace forms of scrubbing and massage. Yet in Turkish the term hamam oğlanı 'bath boy' is still used as a euphemism for a homosexual.
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