A traditional Turkish hamam

The hamam (bathhouse) is the great Turkish social leveller; every city, town and village has one, full of sweating, gossiping people coming clean as they soak away a hard day's work.

Men and women bathe seperately, either in different sections or on designated days or times. This ritual has been practised in Turkey since the Roman era.

Here's how it works: you stroll into the hamam, pay, get handed a small cloth, enter a changing room, take off your clothes and store them in a cubicle. Wrapping yourself in the cloth, you enter a steam-filled room and lie down on the hot marble slabs beneath a domed roof. Here you sweat like a pig until you resemble a piece of soggy sushi.

You can then get up and wash yourself at one of the side basins, but it is far more exciting to splash out on the full service and pay for an attendant to clean you. If you choose the latter, brace yourself for the ultimate invigorating exfoliating body wash.

Armed with a pair of course mitts frothing with olive oil soap, your sadistic attendant will remove the cloth protecting your modesty before scrubbing you like a filthy floor, pummeling you to a pulp and grating you like parmesan cheese until dirt you never knew you had comes rolling off your body. You'll then be led to a basin where the same ritual will be performed on your sorry scalp.

Dazed and tingling, you are then free to stagger back to the hot marble slabs where your sparkling naked body can melt into oblivion.