Loos With Views

These surprisingly scenic urinals are at Maryemana, on a mountain above Ephesus, in western Turkey. Also see the Middle Eastern section of this site for other Turkish plumbing. Someone else has photographed this one for a web site, and they have a better image at urinal.net.

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.

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 my page about French canal boat rental.

A urinal in the Indianapolis Airport control tower, around the 220' level.

The outhouse behind the church in Angoville au Plain, in Normandy. OK, so it's not much of a view, but this is my page and my call.

The toilet in the formerly secret UK government bunkers tunneled into the cliffs above Dover.

Some of the tunnels date from the Napoleanic Wars, but they were greatly expanded during World War II. The UK anti-aircraft operations were controlled from here — radar and other data was gathered and interceptors were dispatched from here. See my page with many pictures from there.

Also see Winston Churchill's chamber pot.

Pit toilet constructed from local rubble, just below the summit of Mt Sinai, Egypt.

Not actually from the era of Moses, thought to be approximately 1450 BC, but the mountain has been a major pilgrimage site at least since when the Byzantine Empress Helena (ruled 313-328 AD) established a monastery at the base of the mountain.

You'd think that during close to 1,700 years they'd have had time to put doors and a roof on the thing!

And yes, the sani-flush blue background does indicate that that I have used this toilet, just as it means on all my other pages.

See pictures of my trip to Egypt for much more on Mount Sinai and Egypt in general.

This one is also filed under Biblical Toilets, Old Testament.

One may find these facilities when trekking in Beşparmak Dağları, the Five Fingers mountain range in Turkey. Note how the waist-high enclosure provides both stunning views of the mountains for a user, and stunning views of the user for a passerby.

An indoor but unplumbed toilet in the Lupanaro, the large brothel in the Roman city of Pompeii. A window next to the toilet looks out onto the street.

For lots more on the toilets and related infrastructure of Pompeii, see the dedicated page.

This is a pit toilet in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota along the Canadian border.

While National Park Service pit toilets are pretty standardized, in the interest of completeness this one is at a campsite on an island in the northern part of Crooked Lake, around UTM 0589359 5339141.

This scenic head is on board the F/B Artemis Greek ferry en route from Ios to Santorini in the Aegean.

Amsterdam has lots of open-air urinals. In some districts you find them on every corner.

These are the old design: a lead-coated vertical panel enclosed within a spiral steel screen.

Then there are the new ones....

It's a plastic design with a steel hook at the top to move it. And yes, this is all there is to it.

It's awfully close to just peeing on a lightpole along the street.

"Performance anxiety" can be a problem. Note the blue border, I know what I'm talking about.

This nicely decorated men's room is on the 25th floor of the Galt House hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, near their RIVUE restaurant and lounge.

Large windows provide sweeping views of Louisville, the Ohio River, and across the river into Indiana.

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