The Roman public latrine is one of the few structures from antiquity that still makes modern visitors physically uncomfortable. A long stone bench, twenty or more keyhole-shaped openings cut into it at close intervals, no partitions, no doors, and a shallow water channel running along the floor at the feet of everyone seated. It looks less like a bathroom than like a piece of civic furniture — which is precisely what it was.

The Cloaca Maxima — the Great Drain — is among the oldest continuously functioning pieces of Roman infrastructure. Built initially in the sixth century BC to drain the marshy valley between the Capitoline and Palatine hills that would become the Roman Forum, it has been carrying water to the Tiber for over 2,600 years. Tourists floating on the Tiber can still see its outlet — a rounded arch of tufa stone nearly four meters high, set into the river embankment near the Forum Boarium — and the drain itself, though substantially rebuilt and extended over centuries, remains active as part of Rome’s modern sewer and stormwater system. It is one of the oldest pieces of civil engineering in continuous use anywhere in the world.