Cemberlitas Hammam

This guide to Çemberlitaş Hammam in Istanbul opens with Nurbanu Sultan, said to have arrived at the Ottoman court as a captured Venetian girl before rising to become Valide Sultan and one of the most powerful women in the empire. It follows why she commissioned this sixteenth-century bathhouse near the ancient Column of Constantine, and how Sinan's team engineered its heated marble floors and star-pierced dome. Look up as you enter — the same shafts of light have fallen through that dome for over four centuries.