Unusual and interesting toilets from all around the world.

Toilets of the World

Toilets of world leaders, artists, and authors: The Ottoman Sultan Woodrow Wilson Leon Trotsky Winston Churchill Adolf Hitler Dwight Eisenhower Robert Kennedy William Shakespeare Edgar Allan Poe Vincent Van Gogh Jim Morrison Lady Gaga

Seatless Toilets

Who Took The Seat? Sometimes you will find that a toilet is missing its seat. I don't mean a squat toilet, but a raised porcelain commode that has holes for mounting a seat and lid but has neither. It seems to need a seat, but the seat is missing. Why does the owner do this? It's for hygiene. Toilets can be much cleaner without seats.

How are you going to use a raised porcelain commode style toilet with no seat?

Toilet seats are made of relatively soft and somewhat porous plastic or painted wood. That soft, porous surface provides plenty of opportunity for dirt and microorganisms to take hold, and it is nearly impossible to get it completely clean.

The bowl itself, however, is vitreous. That is, glass-like. A toilet bowl is extremely hard and non-porous. The outer surface of the bowl is a ceramic glaze that has been fired or baked to convert it to a material similar to glass.

You can be about as harsh or aggressive as you want, mechanically or chemically, in cleaning a toilet bowl.

Meanwhile the entirely non-porous glass-like surface provides no place for microorganisms to hide. So where do you sit? On the rim of the bowl, of course!

Read more about seatless toilets »

Today's Featured Toilet
The City Night Line is a Czech passenger train providing fantastic service north and west from Prague through Berlin, Köln, and Amsterdam. It includes the common couchette overnight accommodations, but it also has luxury first-class sleeper compartments that make it the nicest overnight train I have ever seen!

Above is a compact private toilet in a First Class sleeper compartment on the City Night Line. A similarly small compartment houses a private shower.

My collection of Czech plumbing includes both stationary toilets and sinks, and a wide variety of train toilets.
Check back tomorrow for another featured toilet!
Who is the Toilet Guru?
Bob Cromwell seated on the ancient public toilets in Ephesus.

Who is the Toilet Guru? Is he obsessed? What is it like to be the Toilet Guru? Why does this site exist?

Read more

Let's visit the toilets!