Karakoy: the hippest district of Istanbul, Turkey | The National

Karaköy: the hippest distict of Istanbul, Turkey

David Lepeska

August 14, 2014 Updated: August 14, 2014 03:48 PM

A few weeks ago, I sent an exhausted artist friend visiting from New York to the Turkish bath down the street from my flat, in Istanbul’s Karaköy district. Kılıç Ali Pasa Hamami (www.kilicalipasahamami.com; about US$60 [Dh220] for the total hammam ritual) was designed by Mimar Sinan, Turkey’s great 16th-century architect, as part of a larger complex that includes a tomb and a madrassa, plus a mosque that he modelled on Hagia Sophia, the iconic, Byzantine church, built in 537, across the Golden Horn. The hammam had fallen to near-ruin before a painstaking rehabilitation and its 2012 reopening.
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