Kamusal Yıkanma Peyzajları ve Kentsel Su Pratikleri: Merkezî Spa Yerleşmelerinden Kente Gömülü Hamam Yapılarına

The inscription of the Great Spa Towns of Europe on the UNESCO World Heritage List represents a settlement-based model of bathing heritage in which thermal waters, architectural ensembles, landscape design, and leisure practices are spatially concentrated within holistic urban formations. Although this framework is clearly limited to a geographically and culturally European context, it nevertheless offers a valuable point of reference for comparative discussions on bathing cultures and heritage interpretation. From this perspective, bathing traditions may also be interpreted as urban water practices that shape the environmental relationship between built form, resource use, and everyday health routines. This article examines the spatial and cultural logics of European spa settlements and hammams in the Ottoman/Turkish context through a comparative perspective, without aiming to establish direct equivalence within the same heritage category. The study argues that these two traditions fundamentally differ in the ways they organize bathing practices within the urban environment. While European spa towns function as planned cultural landscapes structured around health-oriented leisure practices and spatial centralization, hammams in Ottoman cities exist as distributed and embedded urban structures, integrated into everyday life through neighborhoods, külliye complexes, and waqf-based systems. Drawing on morphological analysis, historical mapping, and a critical reading of UNESCO nomination frameworks, the study focuses on selected spa towns in Europe and hammam examples in Istanbul. The comparison reveals differences in spatial organization, architectural typology, social accessibility, and cultural meaning. By making these distinct spatial models visible, the article contributes to discussions on bathing heritage and cultural landscapes, emphasizing the importance of developing more plural and context-sensitive interpretative frameworks in comparative heritage studies that move beyond settlement-based approaches. In this respect, bathing traditions may also be understood as urban water practices that shape environmental relationships between built form, resource use, and everyday health-oriented routines.