Ağa Hamamı

This was an authentic Turkish bathhouse in beyoglu. 60 lira for a bath and 100 if you want the massage. I would recommend this — sauna, scrub rinse and massage.

I was recommended to this hamami by a local who regularly hosts airbnb guests. It is authentic, local and not touristic. It also offers some partially co-​ed opportunities for couples travelling together. The staff was super friendly, the services were top notch and the tea was delicious. The atmosphere is super relaxing. I spent most of my evening there! The communal bath area is a bit algae-​grown in the ceiling but it is otherwise rather hygienic. It’s not your chlorine-​cleaned spa from the states! It’s over 500 years old!

Staff here is very nice and walk you through the process. I did not bring a bikini and it was no big deal. Left underwear on for the scrub and I never felt exposed in the coed areas. A fun experience and a value for what you get. if you want to stay with your partner or friends of another gender this place makes it very easy. My skin was glowing afterward and it was relaxing after a few days of footing it around Istanbul.

Had a wonderful (and affordable) experience here! The Hamam was clean and beautiful and the workers were very sweet. It is not separated by gender in the initial bathing room (although women get scrubbed alone in a room), so wear a bathing suit if you’re shy. My friend and I got the sauna and scrub base package and added the hot oil massage. Leave plenty of time, just with one addition we were there for around two hours. Also, I didn’t love my oil massage but my friend liked hers, so it might be hit or miss. But overall a very relaxing and pleasant experience!

Aga Hamami is a great local hamam, dating from 1454, which is obviously heavily frequented by foreigners who get a much better deal and, according to my friend who has tried one, experience than at the hamams in the main tourist areas. The hamam is well kept and very clean. I would imagine it’s less fun when quite full so if it looks really busy maybe come back another time.
50 TL will get you a steam, scrub and soap down, plus as much time as you want hanging out in the clean and attractive marble sicaklik. I thought this was excellent value. If I went back I would probably get the hot oil massage too for 35 TL (I think) extra. If you don’t get the hot oil massage I would advise taking some body lotion because as the owners point out in a response to another review steaming/​scrubbing obviously takes the moisture out of your skin a bit. It also leaves you feeling epically smooth and relaxed.
Women are scrubbed in a separate room, men in the sicaklik. So yes, do not expect privacy if you are a man. Women are advised to wear a bikini which they keep on for initial self washing and steam, then the top but not the bottom will be taken off for the scrub. Going back into the sicaklik you’ll be covered by a towel although I guess could also put your bikini top back on. Changing rooms are private.
I got my hair shampooed and like another reviewer did not enjoy the water over my head experience — it is hard to breathe if you get out of sync with the dousing! Would avoid this next time.
Note — the «thin» towels mentioned by another review do not mean this hamam is using old worn out towels, these are actually very pretty, clean and new hamam towels which you can see for sale at extortionate prices in Istanbul airport (wish I’d bought one but spent all my money on Turkish delight instead). At the end you get a giant fluffy white towel in which you are wrapped up like a taco before being served apple tea, which is basically what I was my situation to be permanently.

This was my first Turkish bath and I guess I had higher expectations and left extremely disappointed. The prices were okay with all the services and massage running 85TL.
I was provided a private changing room to hold my clothes and a thin towel to wrap around my waist. Then I was led into the room that has the big round marble slab. Much to my surprise the women and men are in the same room! Although I thought I had selected a less touristy place, it turned out to be quite full of young, college age men and women visiting on holiday from all over Europe.
But the women were taking all the available space on the slab, laying out on towels like they were sunning on a beach. The guys were sitting on the side areas were water facets were available for the two men who came over and poured water on you and told you to wait. I sat there for several minutes while the other guys were lathered up and washed and scrubed, all while sitting on the low marble seats next to the faucets that were turned on to fill the basins with water.
Then the guys were told to lay on the slab one at a time and the employee put suds over you and massaged your body some before rinsing you off with pans of water.
Of course you’re doing this all while wrapped by a towel, but feeling quite uncomfortable with all the ladies laying next to you and you’re wondering If your body parts are sufficiently covered. Also, while pouring water over your head, the water is poured upward below your face so that the water rushes up your nose and to the back of your throat. Heck, I think I was water boarded, as I had to sit up and cough and clear my pipes. I thought, is dick Cheney on the staff here?
After that miserable experience I was ushered into the lobby after receiving a dry towel to wrap around my body. I was seated and provided hot tea. Of course most of the other guys and gals were all out there too. I asked if I could have my oil massage as soon as possible and was brought up stairs to a massage room where I was given a short massage. The room door was left open and while I was getting a massage, the girls gathered outside the room chatting up a storm and giving me no privacy at all.
In summary, co-​ed bad. Lack of serenity and privacy-​bad. Rushed service –bad. I also left wondering if all baths failed to wash your entire body was due to custom, or was the modesty due to the co-​ed nature of the facility?

Do the bath soap and scrub, but skip the oil massage. For everything, we paid about 85 TL.

It was my first time at a hamam and so I can’t compare it to any previous experience of the kind, but having been to several Spas and massage place I can tell it was both different and good. The owners were brusk yet nice, though probably this feeling was at least partly due to the language barrier. They don’t speak fluent English but have enough to communicate effectively. As soon as I walked in they showed me the list of their services: 40 TL for the bath, 5 TL for a body scrub, 5 TL for a soap bath, and 35 TL for a massage. I chose not to do the massage because I wasn’t sure what kind they would give me; being used to hardcore deep tissue massages I didn’t want to waste time on a superficial massage but now I think it might have been worth it.
The place was smaller than I’d expected, but I think it makes sense being this old. I got undressed and was lead into the main room, a big circular domed space with a hot stone in the middle. Everything is in marble and feels extremely cozy. Something I didn’t expect was that man and women shared this space. There are several sinks along the wall, by which you sit and pout water over yourself with a little basin. Then you go lie on the hot stone and go back to the basin to cool off when you get too hot. Perhaps ten minutes after I entered the bath room, they took me to a separate space where I lied on a marble table and foot scrubbed and washed by a Turkish matron wearing nothing but the thinnest pair of underwear. If you’ve ever received a massage in the US, you know how careful they are about not touching certain areas, uncovering only those inches of skin they’re actually going to massage, etc. Well, nothing like this here! She wasn’t disrespectful or anything, and actually the way she scrubbed and washed me reminded me of my grandmother bathing me as a kid. I guess there’s something really comforting in having an older lady scrub, wash, and massage you. I must also note that my thyroid is bigger than usual — it has always been like this but usually only doctors notice. This lady, however, noticed. I’m sad she didn’t speak much English because she wanted to tell me something about it but I couldn’t understand. Anyhow that made me think she knew her business. Then I went back into the main bath room and repeated the hot stone-​cold water basin sequence until I felt like I couldn’t stay any longer. I went out, get dressed and sat at a low table where they brought me a sweet apple tea. I sat there chatting for about 30 minutes, about as long as it took to be ready to go before, after getting dressed, my body felt melted and I wouldn’t have been able to walk straight out!
All in all, a most pleasant experience. My skin was super smooth and I felt relaxed all throughout my body. I think the massage would have been a nice complement to the whole experience because my muscles got so relaxed that some good work could have been done there.

Being a dumb American in Istanbul for the first time and never having had a true Turkish hamam experience, I decided to splurge on my last day in town. Also, being American, I am lazy. What better way to bathe than have someone else do it for you? Similarly, my lazy self didn’t feel like finding more soap and after a long trip I had run out the day before. The conditions were set. The perfect formula for foreign soap sud bodily marination.
Walking into the hamam I found out how historical the place truly was. I asked the host/​receptionist about it and apparently the hamam was built in the mid 1400’s. After going over the various bathing options I settled on a 70 TL (~$ 40 USD) package that included lounging and getting brutally bathed by a stranger. I was sent to a private room to undress and put on a towel and lock my things up, and then led into the bathhouse itself. Holy granite, this place was antiquated. In a good way. Sitting down, you realize that over 500 years worth of butts have sat there before. If my math checks out, and it does, that is a lot of butts.
A quick explanation was given about what was to occur to my clueless self and I was given a wash basin and sat next to a fancy granite sink with the oldest operating valve in the world. It was then I realized that this hamam was unisex. Way-​o! Thirty minutes of dumping hot water over my head later, my hamami homey walked in ready to get down to business. He instructed me to lie down and proceeded to stretch me in ways a human is not designed to stretch and then scrubbed the everliving crap out of me with a scrubbing sponge that must have been made out of 40 grit sandpaper. And it. Was. AWESOME. It hurt so good.
Unlike most Americans, I am not fat, so I do not feel like I got a fair body surface area to Turkish lira ratio. Those larger dudes in there definitely paid less per square inch of their skin to be scrubbed and stretched beyond reasonable angles by another similarly large, toweled, middle-​aged, and mustached Turkish man. I shop at Costco, I like things in bulk. Wholesale prices, dammit.