NUN X yoğunluk
The Istanbul Museum of Water & Ritual was created through the adaptive reuse of a hammam dating from the Sinan period. The museum explores the multilayered role of water in the city’s culture, embracing purification, ablution, bathing traditions, and the historical infrastructure of water through both informative and experiential dimensions.
The visitor first encounters the former women’s section of the hammam, reinterpreted as the informative zone. Here, objects, archival documents, videos, and text panels present the religious, social, and aesthetic meanings of water. The display language brings together historical depth and contemporary clarity, organizing the layers of knowledge into a calm and intelligible sequence.
The former men’s section has been redesigned as the experiential zone. In this part of the museum, the space becomes a scenographic environment shaped by light, sound, mist, and temperature. With the göbek taşı and cehennemlik areas at its center, the atmosphere allows visitors to sense the purifying and transformative nature of water through embodied experience. Here, ritual becomes spatial.
The entrance’s cold-room (soğukluk) is arranged as a bookstore and gift area. At the end of the visit, guests are offered a bottle of water, a subtle gesture that completes the narrative of the museum.
The Istanbul Museum of Water & Ritual is a space of remembrance and awareness shaped around water. It invites visitors to revisit the everyday rituals of the past through a contemporary lens, discovering anew the profound cultural meanings carried by water.
