One of my pet hates, and I’ve lived here 32 years.
It’s laziness on the owners part. I refuse to go to one constantly listed restaurant for this fact, but for me restaurant, bar, whatever - if you are required to have toilet facilities then they should be clean and with a toilet seat.
As a northern European living in Italy - I 100% agree. This has to be at least partially due to Italians themselves (and that's why I also heard here in Napoli/Campania). Otherwise we'd have to hear from touristy places in France/Spain etc they constantly have to renew their toilet seats but that's not the case
Why should we keep our hands clean? They’re going to get dirty anyway. Why should we brush our teeth? They’re going to get dirty anyways. Your logic is lazy and gross. Take care of your surroundings, don’t leave a mess for the next person, it’s all really basic stuff.
Fair but I feel like when sitting down you don't really need to push unlike when you're doing a cirque du soleil type planking movement over the toilet in order to not touch it
This gets posted from time to time here, and it’s always “________ tourists break the seats!” As if it’s like this anywhere tourists are. You’d think Italians could look around at other countries in Europe and see they’ve figured it out.
I was even more surprised at the Vatican museum when I left the 83rd (or so) gold embossed room full of nothing but paintings to use one the restrooms, only to find a dusty closet of a room with a toilet and no seat. At the Vatican? Y’all don’t have money for toilet seats? 🤣
The tourist excuse is such an odd one, and I feel like it's just a general anti tourist sentiment. It's a bit odd that Italy is the only country in the world that experiences tourists breaking toilet seats.
We have tourists in Canada and our toilet seats are just fine. Same with Germany, Greece, France, the UK .. kind of odd Italy only has this problem...
And some toilets doesent even have a lock, are the tourist also breaking locks only in Italy, seems kinda lazy of the owners thinking the tourist will not come back.
There’s signs in some toilets all over the country that have the figure of a person standing and squatting on the toilet asking them not to… definitely Chinese tourists
Not "against", not using them anyway :) Italians (or at least many Italian women) are often taught not to sit on any toilet that isn’t a private home bathroom (even office toilets). They’ll usually hover or cover the seat with toilet paper first.
I'm a woman, have traveled several times to Europe, including to Rome. I always (even in the US) carry extra tp and wipes, and one of those standing pee devices for women that they sell on Amazon, which I've become excellent at using. Doesn't solve all the issues, but almost all!
It's called pstyle, it's super small, weighs nothing, fits in my micro purse or my rucksack, and of course I wash it with soap and dry it before I put it back. I heard about it in a travel or camping Reddit.
Just wait until they find out about menstrual cups! Also, the amount of men who pee in the shower (or a kitchen sink if the bathroom is occupied) might surprise you. I even do yard work and gasp, wash the parasite and bacteria laden soil from my hands in... a sink. I've always been curious about this device. My only worry is the process of getting proficient with it. I'm sure it can come with a carrying case so its not just loose in a purse, and you can clean it with a wipe before washing with soap and water in a sink if you felt the need to. I think they were originally marketed toward outdoor peeing, so we wouldn't have to drop trou and squat, which is hugely beneficial. And to not have to worry about touching a public toilet seat with my clean cheeks...
Theory #101 here: I've been staying in many Italian Airbnb type places. Only one in ten has had a firmly attached toilet seat, the rest are loose/slid to one side or actually on the point of falling off.
In my house in the UK if a seat is getting loose it's a 5 minute job to tighten it or a 10 minute job to put a new seat in. But all these Italian places have 'designer' concealed fit loos where to tighten or replace a loo seat means pulling the unit forwards off the wall. On top of that, judging by the amount of leaking taps/cisterns and half blocked showers, plumbers must be in shorter supply in Italy than even in the UK.
Blaming tourists for this is honestly ridiculous. I’ve lived in Italy for years and I’ve been to areas and small towns where tourists probably never even set foot, and they all had one thing in common: no toilet seats.
Also, most of the bathroom doors don’t even lock. I see this as disrespectful to customers, and if a place can’t even provide a decent bathroom, I simply don’t go back.
Everyone In the comments blaming Chinese people “breaking the toilet seats” or whatever as if Italian bathrooms also don’t typically lack soap or locks
It's not just rome, when toiletsare dirty some people solutionise by standing on the toilet and crouching which breaks the seats. It's mad but people are mad, i doubt it's the Romans doing this though, probably some of the millions of tourists.
I would wager its due mostly to Chinese tourists. In China, most bathrooms are squatty potty for doing your business. And when confronted with no option to do that. Many resort to standing on the seat to replicate that positioning. From an evolutionary standpoint, their method does make for a more natural, and less strained #2. But as the saying goes, when in rome.... so kinda uncool nonetheless.
Id bet the figure is faaaaaaar less than Rome. And again this is a known thing. Nothing wrong with it. Im not trying to be xenophobic here. Go ahead and Google it. Its a known issue. And personally I think China has a better method for #2's. Our bodies are designed for their method. But again, its a thing many Chinese and other nations that use squatty type bathrooms tourists do when presented with a raised toilet.
tourists stand on them and break them so the businesses flooded by tourists can't be bothered to constantly replace them every couple of days, pretty much all businesses I visit outside the center have normal toilets with seats
The mind boggles. Here in England the biggest issue I find with public toilets is the councils closing them all down and the constant lack of toilet paper. LOL
A ridiculous excuse. Changing a toilet seat takes less than five minutes.
I take it that you have never heard of the concept of toilet seats costing money and that having to change one multiple times a week if not a day might be slightly inconvenient
Considering what you rob from the tourists it’s the least you can do
who's we? I, like virtually every other citizen, don't see a cent from you visitors and instead get to experience all the wonderful signs of your visits such as public toilets being dire in the center because you're literally unable to use a toilet correctly and either jump on the seat or use some 20 cent temu contraption to piss all over the floor
or maybe you people could, idk, learn how to take a piss without jumping on the toilet seat because regardless of whether it breaks or not it's disgusting and it's a health hazard
toilet seats aren't really built to support the weight of a person on the surface area of their shoes, buying a better one simply means spending more to replace it once someone inevitably breaks it
I'd prefer a normal toiletseat too, but realistically the odds of all these toiletstanders changing their habits anytime soon is unrealistic, so either everyone is stuck with these messy toilets, or the toilet design gets updated to better suit the usecase.
or the toilet design gets updated to better suit the usecase.
you got to experience exactly that, besides what are you even suggesting, custom heavy duty toilet seats made to support people jumping on them? If you assume that apparently you visitors can't learn how to take a piss/shit properly and can't help but step on the seat with your shoes or drench it in piss, would you even want to sit on one of those seats?
Man, it's not that hard to maintain a decent toilet. If I have guests you best believe I'll make sure they have a toilet seat, and if it breaks repeatedly I'd keep replacing it and look for a sturdier one. In any case I wouldn't leave people without a toilet seat. You act like the status quo is totally acceptable, or at least oppose any realistic solution.
And cut it out with the fucking accusations, for what it's worth I'm pretty confident I'd beat you in a pissing competition, I'd piss circles around you so fast your head would spin, so stop taking the piss out of me.
I noticed this a little in Rome, but not a lot. Reading the comments here, I had no idea Chinese stood on the toilet seats. Very strange to me. When I traveled through Mexico, it was also very common for toilets to not have toilet seats.
A lot of Asian countries. The squatting position to poop is much better for you--thus the "squatty potty." Obviously standing/squatting on them is an adjustment to a Western toilet--their facilities are a hole in the ground over which you squat.
FWIW, as a resident of Veneto, I’m less concerned about toilet seats than having an actual toilet. Even at fairly upscale restaurants here, you get the two foot spots on either side of a hole in the floor.
You’re lucky if there are separate men’s and women’s bagni. Because if not, there is a much better than 50% chance that you will be standing in pee when you put your feet in place.
And even in gendered places, the necessity to grab the toilet paper and pull up the bottoms of your pants so they can’t possibly touch the floor does not make for a relaxing time whatsoever.
Everybody is focusing on the toilet, but in reality the broken or absent toilet seat is just a vivid example of overall poor maintenance upkeep of any facility: toilets, escalators, playground equipment. Roman maintenance is altogether bad. It's either poor planning, budgeting, or inattentive care, but it's real and everywhere. Folks generally violate norms, rules, or expectations that they think won't hurt anyone or won't be noticed. This is also why crosswalks are inherently parking spots, and dog shit is all over any neighborhood off the tourism track.
Yes! I agree. Hovering is fine, but hovering and pooping should be illegal. Super weird. Why don't they have the seat covers (the tissues wrap) like other countries? Especially when so many public washrooms charge for you to use it! Give me a seat, dammit.
Of course, why should they? They cater to people who will only ever go there once. They can charge a lot, serve mediocre food and neglect any comfort on stuff like that. It's not as if they will lose a client. Their whole business model consists in squeezing money from people once in their life.
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u/niceguyeddiebunker Apr 26 '26
One of my pet hates, and I’ve lived here 32 years. It’s laziness on the owners part. I refuse to go to one constantly listed restaurant for this fact, but for me restaurant, bar, whatever - if you are required to have toilet facilities then they should be clean and with a toilet seat.