When curator Anlam de Coster first stepped into Istanbul’s Zeyrek Çinili Hamam a year ago, she knew the 500-year-old Turkish bath’s freshly renovated and marble-clad interior could offer a backdrop for art. “Everything sat in a subtle harmony, not only physically but symbolically,” she told AN Interior. This led her to organize the currently ongoing exhibition, Healing Ruins, with 22 Turkish and international artists.

Located in the Zeyrek district on the city’s historic Golden Horn peninsula, part of the UNESCO World Heritage list, the roughly 32,000-square-foot bath was commissioned around the 1530s by the navy admiral Barbaros Hayreddin Pasha (also known as Barbarossa) to Mimar Sinan, the celebrated Ottoman architect whose masterpieces include Süleymaniye Mosque. After various phases and centuries of decay, the architectural marvel was acquired by the Marmara Group in 2010. What was planned as a regular facelift evolved into a 13-year restoration project.

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