At the time of its construction Hammam al-Pasha was one of the largest and most magnificent bathhouses in the area. A guest of al-Jazzar from the British fleet wrote in 1801: "The bath of Akko is the finest and best built of any that we saw in the Turkish empire... Every kind of antique marble, together with large pillars of Egyptian granite, might be observed among the materials of construction"

The bathhouse is named after Ahmad Jazzar Pasha (reigned 1775-1804), the ruler who constructed the building and was apparently the architect and the engineer of this construction along with few other magnificent buildings in Acre which dominate the face of Acre to this day.

The hammam, that might have been built on the site of an older bathhouse, is roughly rectangle in shape. The sequence of movement through the building starts with an open courtyard. The courtyard leads into the summer undressing room, a large, well lit domed room, similar in size to the courtyard. The domed summer undressing room is encircled by marble benches with a fountain at its center. A meandering corridor leads from the summer undressing room to the winter undressing room, followed by the warm room, both rooms are covered with small domes embedded with skylights. The warm room opens to the final and most impressive room; the hot room. This room is lit by colorful round rays of light filtered through the multicolored glass embedded in the domes of the room. The effect of the rays entering the room was strengthened by steam rising from the subterranean tunnels and marking the path of each ray. Spaces in the corner were enclosed to create private areas.

The floor of the Hammam is paved with marble slabs, its walls are decorated with colorful tiles imported from Damascus and Anatolia and its columns are made of marble, granite and porphyry (some of which were apparently taken from the ruins of Caesarea).


Sources:

Dichter, Bernhard. 2000. Akko-Sites from the Turkish Period. Haifa: University of Haifa, p. 210

Lurie, Yehoshua. 2000. Acre-The Walled City: Jews among the Arabs, Arabs among the Jews. Tel Aviv: Yaron Golan Publication, p.28-49

Petersen, Andrew. 2001. A Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine: Part 1.Oxford: Oxford University Press p.85

Schur, Nathan. 1990. A History of Acre. Tel Aviv: Dvir Publishing House, p. 207-216