Late Republican-Era Roman Toilets
Rome is filled with ruins. Here is an example of an entire block that has been recently excavated. This is the block between Largo di Torre Argentina and Via Florida on the north and south, respectively, and Via di Torre Argentina and Via San Nicola da' Cesarini on the west and east, respectively. This is the view looking north from Via Florida.
The wide steps to the left are remains of a temple probably dedicated to Feronia, an ancient Italic goddess of the harvest. Just beyond that temple are remains of the central exedra of Pompey's portico.
Just beyond the center of the area shown here are the remains of the Statio Aquarum or the Office of the Department of Water Distribution.
Pompey, more formally known as Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, lived 106-48 BC. He was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic. He was initially an ally to Julius Caesar, and joined Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus in the First Triumvirate which dominated military and political developments in the late Roman Republic. After the death of Crassus, Pompey and Caesar fought for leadership in Caesar's civil war, with Pompey on the side of the conservative and aristocratic faction of the Roman Senate. He was defeated by Caesar in the battle of Pharsalus, sought refuge in Egypt, and was then assassinated.
Pompey's portico was used as the Senate house. The Senate met there, and it was where Julius Caesar was assassinated on 15 March 44 BC.
A large public latrine is found in the northwest corner of this excavated block. This would have been the toilet used when the Roman Senate took a bathroom break, since the Senate met in the building adjacent to the south side of this large latrine.
In the picture at left you see the tram that runs south on Via di Torre Argentina. Along the base of the wall you see the drainage line for the public latrines. Pompey's portico and the Senate meeting hall is hidden by the trees to the left.
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A long row of seats, now missing, would have been directly over the large channel. Users would have been seating facing toward our right in this view, or toward the more recent brick wall, so they could bend forward and dip water from the shallow channel running past their feet.
Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box."
In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.
| A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used. |
How long have my Toilets of the World pages been around? I'm not exactly sure, although they started in the mid 1990s as a single page on a Purdue University server. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see what that looked like as far back as January 17, 1999.
My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001, although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous Toilet of the World page until January 17, 2002. Some time soon after that I split it into categories, and the collection has grown ever since.
If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):
