Turkish Bath (ETW building)
| Turkish Bath | |
|---|---|
| Category: | Entertainment |
| Level: | 1 |
| Turns to build: | 3 |
| Building cost: | 1500 |
| |
| Requires | |
 Coffee House | |
| Enables | |
 Seraglio | |
The influence of Ottoman culture and power extends to how people enjoy themselves. A Turkish bath is not just a place to get clean, socialise and catch up on gossip.
Intimate pleasures are also available – at a price. The bathhouse staff, or “tellak”, help customers wash themselves, much as the slaves did in Roman and Byzantine baths centuries before. Incidentally, the Byzantine designs influenced the layout and processes of the Turkish bath. However, tellak are young men (never women) recruited from among the non-Muslim subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire, selected for their good looks and pliant ways. A visit to a Turkish bath can therefore be a purely hygienic exercise, an opportunity for gossip, or a chance to indulge a taste for depravity.
Historically, Turkish baths did become popular across Europe although not necessarily always as disguised bawdyhouses. By the Victorian period, they were a popular – and unimpeachable – adjunct to many gentlemen’s clubs and the better sort of hotel.