Nobody explains it before you go in, and the whole thing is conducted in a language of nods. Here is the plain version: what happens, in what order, what to wear, how long it takes, and where the Moroccan one differs.
A hammam is a public bath house — the Ottoman descendant of the Roman baths, and still a working institution across Turkey, North Africa and the Levant. The architecture is the same everywhere: a cool entrance room where you undress, a warm room, and a hot chamber under a domed ceiling with a large heated marble platform in the middle of it. That platform is the göbek taşı, the belly stone, and it is where the work happens.
The important thing to understand is that a hammam is not a spa treatment that happens to involve water. It is a wash. The purpose is to get properly clean, in company, slowly, and everything else about it — the heat, the marble, the tea afterwards — is arranged around that.
A massage and an oiling are often offered as extras between the wash and the cool down. They are optional and they are not what you came for.
Keep the wrap on. Most men wear swimming trunks or underwear underneath it and nobody minds either way; in mixed or tourist-facing houses, swimwear is usually required. Bring nothing — soap, mitt, towels and sandals are all provided. Do not shave immediately beforehand, and do not go on a full stomach.
They are close relatives with different tools, and the result is much the same. If someone offers you either, the honest answer is that the difference is a matter of texture rather than of kind.
There is very little of this available anywhere near Sacramento, which is the reason Menswood exists in the shape it does: instead of a bath house you travel to, a personal care professional comes to your home with everything needed, and the same three parts happen in your own bathroom — a Turkish-style full body bath, a full body scrub, and a full body moisturize.
$185 for the Turkish Bath, which takes about two hours. It can also be booked at a private Sacramento location instead of at your own address — one client at a time, no waiting room, and the address is given once the appointment is confirmed.
Full detail, including what is included and what can be added: a Turkish bath at home.
In a traditional hammam you are given a thin checked cotton wrap, a peştemal, and you keep it on. Most men wear swimming trunks or underwear underneath it; nobody minds either way. You are never expected to walk about uncovered, and in the mixed or tourist-facing houses swimwear is usually required.
Allow an hour and a half to two hours. The scrub and the foam wash together take about half an hour of that; the rest is warming up beforehand and sitting still afterwards, and the sitting still is not optional padding — it is half the point.
They are close relatives with different tools. A Turkish hammam is built around a large heated marble slab you lie on, and the scrub is done with a coarse mitt called a kese, followed by a foam wash. A Moroccan bath, or beldi, is usually done in a steam room rather than on a heated slab, starts with black olive soap left on the skin to soften it, uses a kessa glove for the scrub, and often finishes with a rhassoul clay mask. The result is much the same. The Moroccan version tends to be steamier and slower, the Turkish one hotter, firmer and more theatrical.
No, but it is firmer than most people expect and it is not a massage. It should feel like being scrubbed, not scratched. If it is too hard, say so — that is a normal thing to say and it will simply be eased off.
No. A sauna is dry heat you sit in. A hammam is wet heat, warm marble and running water, and the heat is the preparation rather than the event — what you are there for is the scrub and the wash that follow it.
There is very little in the Sacramento area, which is why Menswood brings the service to the client instead — a Turkish-style full body bath, a full body scrub and a moisturize, in an ordinary home bathroom, or at a private Sacramento location by appointment.