Francesco, a young Italian architect, inherits an old Turkish bath from a distant relative. Leaving his unfaithful wife Marta in Rome he goes to Turkey, intending to dispose of the property. To his surpise though, he falls in love with the bathhouse and its culture, and then with Mehmet, the son of the caretaker. He decides to stay on in Turkey and run the bathhouse, but his plans are complicated by real estate developers and the reappearance of Marta, who discovers his affair with Mehmet.