The Turkish bath is a relatively recent addition to the Bodrum Castle and there is no evidence of any bathing facilities attributable to the era when the Knights of St. John were masters of the fortress. Later records are very rare and include little detail, but Evliya Celebi, a Turkish traveler who visited Bodrum in 1671, specifically notes in his account that there was no bath (hamam) within the castle walls which enclosed the whole tiny, impoverished population of Bodrum. Although the exact date of its construction cannot be firmly established, some purposeful historical sleuthing points strongly to the end of the 19th century as the time when the Bodrum Castle acquired its first Turkish bath. The original facility, which fell into disuse and disrepair following the First World War, was restored to reflect the features of a noteworthy Turkish 'hamam' and was opened to the public in 1991 as an exhibit of a particularly Turkish cultural tradition.

History notes that the first Crusaders did not hold bathing in high esteem Their hosts were riddled with diseases, primarily due to dismal personal hygiene. While the Byzantines continued the Roman bath tradition, though on a much smaller scale, and the Turks under the Muslim strictures of cleanliness developed the Turkish bath, western Europeans were very slow to accept that bathing the body is beneficial, so it is not surprising that no remains of a bath dating to the times of the Knights have been found in the Bodrum Castle.

It is believed that the restored Turkish bath exhibited today was originally built shortly after the castle became a prison in 1893, and its building was probably directed by Hoca Arif Efendi, a scholar of note who was in Bodrum Castle in 1896-97, held under fortress arrest together with Muneccim Hoca Muin, one of the founders of the Istanbul observatory. In his history of Bodrum, Avram Galanti Bodrumlu credits Hoca Arif Efendi with the installation of iron pipes to replace the settlement's open-channel water supply system, so it would seem appropriate that a person of his rank would feel the need of a proper Turkish bath and be in a position to have one built.

The restored bath exhibit illustrates the typical characteristics of a Turkish hamam and includes objects associated with the Turkish bathing tradition. One of its principal aspects is washing in water poured over the body and then drained away immediately after use, a hygienic method that avoids having people other than the bather coming in contact with water once used. Another mark of the hamam is its hot room - the Latin caldarium of Roman baths - where heated air circulates through channels in the floor and in the walls while the surrounding steam and hot water poured over the body open the pores. This preparatory stage permits deep cleansing which consists of an invigorating scrub-down massage with a special rough cloth known as kese wielded by a professional bath attendant called 'tellak'. The dressing room of the Turkish hamam, the apoditerium of the Romans, is not just a changing room but a place of relaxation and cooling off after the ablutions in the hot room. It is also a place of socializing, especially on women's days in public Turkish baths (or in separate women's hamams) where the ladies stay on to eat, slake their thirst and engage in neighborly gossip.

This exhibit is the only functioning hamam to have been restored by the Ministry of Culture. The restoration was made in 1991 with the technical support of the Ministry of Culture, the General Directorate of Monuments and Museums, the Center for the Administration of Circulating Capital Funds of the Ministry of Culture, and the Directorate for Documentation of Monuments in Izmir. It was opened to the public with the assistance of the Bodrum Lions Club.