French Toilets

This is the sink and bidet in my room at the Hotel de Medicis in the Quartier Latin of Paris.

Jim Morrison stayed in a nearly identical room just below this one.

See the page on Jim Morrison's Bidet and Sink for more on this specific plumbing.

See my page about Jim Morrison in Paris for more about this hotel and his time in Paris.

See the dedicated page for more about bidets.

The automated public toilets now common in France.

Originally they were coin-operated, but now they are free.

The newer design of entry panel seen here shows an orange "unavailable" indicator — the toilet is in its cleaning cycle immediately after a use.

The older design at left shows a green "LIBRE" or free indicator, it will open when you press the large button.

The toilet design has changed over time.

The older ones, at left, had an unusual design. The bowl was just that — a bowl with no drain. It is flushed after you leave the compartment by rotating back into the wall and being hosed out.

The newer ones, at right, have a more conventional design. But they are still retracted and sprayed down after every use.

Compartments on the panel above the toilet dispense toilet paper and provide water, soap, and hot air for hand cleaning.

A floor sensor detects whether a person is really inside or not. If there is no person, or after a period of time even if there is a person, the door automatically opens.

After the person steps out, the door closes and the entire interior is sprayed with a disinfectant. The toilet bowl is rotated back into the wall and hosed out. After this quick cycle of 60 seconds or less, it is available for the next user.

Also see the Futuristic High-Tech Toilet page for more along these lines.

I hope that this will give no offense, but the French term for a simple public urinal really is pissoir.

Here is a pissior public in Avranches.

Wait, that's redundant. Tous les pissoirs sont publics.

Also see the Loos with Views page.

A urinal right next to a window, in the town park in Cours-les-Barres, France, along the Canal Lateral a la Loire.

Also see the Loos with Views page.

Lower-cost hotels in France often feature toilette au couloir. That is, the toilet is down the hall.

This example is from the Hotel Rivoli in Paris, a great place to stay. Just 35€ per night for a single room with a great location. 44 Rue de Rivoli, +33-1-42-72-08-41.

The Hôtel du Palais in Rouen has a mix of rooms, some en suite (with their own plumbing) and some without.

Hôtel du Palais
12 rue du Tambour
+33-2-3571-4140
No web site or e-mail, just call them and make a reservation. Be ready to speak French.

If you're looking for the toilette au couloir, it's actually in the open light well rather than the couloir.

There's one in a little cabin on the next floor up.

Tired of plain old white toilet paper?

The Printemps department store in Paris has a small special section on decorating your bathroom, to the point of brightly colored and patterns toilet paper and designer toilet seats.

This section is appropriately next to one set of public toilets.

This very blue toilet in a very blue lavatory is in a brasserie near Notre Dame in Paris.

The Hôtel Première Class chain, despite its name, is a fairly low cost and basic French hotel chain (the Formule F1 chain seems to be the next step down, with shared baths at least in some locations).

This is the toilet in a room at their hotel in Cergy-Pontoise, just outside Paris.

An upscale squatter at a brasserie in Béziers, France, along the Canal du Midi.

A sink with a knee-controlled valve in a kebab shop in Béziers, France, along the Canal du Midi. It's much cleaner this way!

The toilet at the restaurant La 7eme Vague (The 7th Wave) in Port Cassafieres, France.

As commonly found in Europe, the flushing control is a tank-top split button allowing you to select just enough for #1 or a full flush for #2.

At left is Chartres Cathedral. At right is the rather dingy toilet in the nearby underground parking facility.

Really it's un établissement public de stationnement, but the creeping English invasion of terminology has recently led to the increased use of the term «le parking».

At least «le skid-mark» has not yet elbowed its way into French.

As discussed on the Squat or Sit page, brasseries in Paris often have just a squat toilet.

Very sturdily built concrete public urinals in Arles, France.

Municipal showers?

As in, "I'm going downtown to take a shower"?

Somewhat mysterious, spotted in Arles, France.

A rock-cut toilet facility at the Monastery of St-Hilaire, in the Luberon region of Provence, east of Avignon.

The outhouse behind the church in Angoville au Plain, in Normandy.

Also see the Loos with Views page.

Well, there's just no delicate way of explaining this one....

This is an unusual flushing mechanism I encountered for the first time in a small hotel in Avignon. Pressing the flush button starts a complicated sequence:

• A hidden tank is filled.
• That water is dumped into the bowl.
• The plug-like impellor drops maybe two cm while spinning rapidly and a powerful vacuum attempts to pull the material in the bowl into the drain.
• The hidden tank is filled again.
• Another suction flush cycle with impellor spin occurs.

I experienced a failure. Yes, yes, I stopped it up and had to poke around with the handle end of the toilet brush, and then clean up that mess. At least it did not go horribly wrong — the high-speed spinning hub seems to risk a rather spectacular failure mode.

Yes, you can tour the sewers of Paris. And yes, of course, I took pictures.

Click here to see the page of pictures from the sewers of Paris.

                
This is one of the heads and the flushing mechanism on board a rented Crusader canal boat in France.

Here is the head on an Orion, a very similar rented canal boat in France.

The Crusader was derived from the earlier Orion design. The only differences I noticed between the two boat designs were:

• A bow thruster was added to the Crusader design.
• The main helm position is designed a little differently.
• The domestic water supply is designed differently, with multiple much smaller pressure tanks on the earlier Orion versus a single much larger pressure tank on the Crusader.
• The simpler toilets on the earlier Orion, which worked much better. The Orion toilets are operated by pressing a waterproofed button on the panel below the counter to pump water into the bowl, and stepping on a foot pedal (barely visible below the bowl in the image at right) to open the large flapper valve into the holding tank. For much better performance, use the detachable shower spray nozzle. The entire head compartment is the shower, see the picture at right with the drain in the floor. The Crusader heads had a complicated and poorly performing T-handle pumping mechanism.

I have taken these on trips on the Canal Latéral à la Loire between Briare and Decize, and on the Canal du Midi between Port Cassafieres and Castelnaudary. Click here for many more pictures of those trips.

This Toilette a Grande Vitesse, or High Speed Toilet, is found on the TGV or Train a Grande Vitesse, the High Speed Train running through France.

Before leaving my seat, my GPS had synced up and was indicating a speed of 305 km/hour.

The toilet at left is on an older regional train in southern France, running between Toulouse and Avignon.

The one at right is a nearly identical design on a slightly newer regional train running between Nice and Marseille.

Old-style train toilets like these have no holding tank. Their flapper valve opens into a 10cm diameter pipe dropping straight onto the tracks.

At left is the toilet on an newer RER regional train in France, running between Marseille and Béziers. It's stainless steel, vacuum flushed, with a holding tank.

At right you see a variety of trains in the Marseille station — a TGV on the nearest track, and two regional trains on the platforms beyond it.

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.

The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie Horan, contends that civilization began with the toilet.

Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Laura Noren and Harvey Molotch, has essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and architects on the importance of the toilet, especially for urban dwellers.

Latrinae Et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World describes the toilets of the Roman Empire from Iberia to Syria, and from North Africa to Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.

Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, explains the history of personal cleanliness and hygiene to children in grades 5-8.

If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):

• Travel suggestions
• To Bob's main site