This 500-year-old hammam is a superb example of an Iranian bathhouse. A recent restoration has stripped away 17 layers of plaster (note the wall inside the second room) to reveal the original sarough, a type of plaster made of milk, egg white, soy flour and lime that is said to be stronger than cement. Richly coloured tiles and delicate painting feature throughout, and a further highlight is the panorama of the town’s minarets and badgirs viewed from the roof.
Twisting corridors is a feature of Kashani architecture, designed to maximise the privacy of the household; here in the bathhouse, the purpose was to keep in the steam. Visitors would have used the antechamber to disrobe and store their shoes (in the lit alcoves at floor level) and would have proceeded to the inner rooms for a scrub down. Bowls made of copper, used for its conductive properties, were used for heating the water and pipes channelled the water underground heating the floors. Hammams were never just about ablutions, though; they primarily functioned as a meeting place where politics would be discussed and marriages made and where men and women, assigned access at different times, could relax in their own company. Importantly, then, the glazed glass in the domes allowed light to filter in while keeping peeping toms out.
