Four Steam-Bathing Traditions: Finnish Sauna, Turkish Hammam, Russian Banya, and Korean Jjimjilbang

It's a curious fact of human history that the idea of gathering to sweat together, on purpose, in a heated room, took root independently across such a wide range of cultures — each one developing its own architecture, tools, and etiquette around essentially the same basic act. Four traditions in particular have each grown into something distinct enough to deserve its own gallery: the Finnish sauna, the Turkish hammam, the Russian banya, and the Korean jjimjilbang.

Finnish sauna: dry heat and löyly

The Finnish sauna is likely the most globally recognized of the four, and it centers on a wood-panelled room heated by a kiuas — traditionally a wood-fired stove topped with rocks, though electric heaters are now common in home and urban settings. What sets it apart is löyly: water thrown onto those hot rocks, flashing into a burst of steam that briefly intensifies the felt heat far beyond the room's actual air temperature. Sessions are built in rounds, alternating heat with a cool-down — a cold shower, a lake, or in the most iconic version, a roll in the snow or a dip through a hole cut in lake ice. Birch whisks, called vihta or vasta depending on the region, are a traditional companion, used to gently fan the steam and tap the skin. In Finland, the sauna is less a spa amenity than a basic feature of ordinary life, found in homes, apartment buildings, and even some workplaces.

Turkish hammam: marble, steam, and scrub

The hammam traces its roots to Roman and Byzantine bathing culture, refined and expanded under the Ottoman Empire into the ornate marble bathhouses many associate with the tradition today. Rather than water thrown on hot rocks, a hammam generates steam centrally and channels it through the building, keeping a large marble platform called the göbek taşı, or belly stone, warm underfoot and to lie on. The signature ritual is the kese, an exfoliating scrub performed with a coarse mitt, often followed by a foam massage — a hands-on, social experience typically carried out by an attendant rather than a solo affair. Historic hammams are architectural landmarks in their own right, with domed ceilings pierced by small star-shaped skylights that scatter soft daylight across the steam.

Russian banya: wood heat and the venik

The banya shares some DNA with the Finnish sauna — a wood-fired stove, stones, and water thrown to produce steam — but its character and rituals developed distinctly. Banya steam tends to run hotter and more humid than a typical Finnish session, and the venik, a bundle of birch or oak branches, is used more actively than its Finnish counterpart: bathers (often with a partner's help) use it to briskly beat and massage the skin, believed in tradition to improve circulation and open the pores. A cold plunge or a roll in snow follows the heat, mirroring the same hot-cold contrast found in Finnish practice. The banya has a long social history in Russian and broader Slavic culture, historically doubling as a communal gathering space in rural villages, and it remains a fixture of both countryside dachas and city bathhouses today.

Korean jjimjilbang: the modern bathhouse complex

The jjimjilbang is the youngest of the four traditions in its current form, emerging in South Korea in the late 20th century as an expansion of older public bathhouse culture into large, often 24-hour entertainment-and-relaxation complexes. Alongside gender-separated hot and cold soaking pools, a jjimjilbang typically features several hanjeungmak — kiln-shaped rooms built from clay or stone and heated to a range of different temperatures, often themed with materials like salt, charcoal, or jade. Unlike the other three traditions, much of a jjimjilbang is communal and mixed-gender, with guests dressed in matching uniforms provided by the facility, relaxing in shared lounge areas, napping rooms, and sometimes restaurants between visits to the heated rooms. It's as much a social destination for a whole afternoon or evening as it is a bathing ritual in the narrower sense.

Different rooms, the same instinct

What's striking across all four traditions isn't just that they each involve heat and steam, but how differently each culture built out the experience around that shared core — wood and birch in the north, marble and scrub in the Ottoman world, birch beating and cold plunges in Russia, and a sprawling communal complex in modern Korea. Explore the people, architecture, and artifacts behind each tradition in our Sauna & Steam-Bathing Culture Museum.