Köttelgang

A place to do your business

As we all know, in the Middle Ages, according to our standards, it must have smelled terrible. Most people didn’t care where they relieved themselves. A night, they used a chamber pot … and tipped the contents out the window on to the street in the morning!

One of the few remaining toilets from the Middle Ages can be found in the Obere Schmiedgasse – a narrow opening between two houses in which one sat to do your “business” – in a row and without partitions. Unlike today, the latrines of the Middle Ages weren’t private places where one went alone.