The public latrines of Ephesus are one of the most visited — and most photographed — features of the site, occupying a small building near the Terrace Houses on Curetes Street. The rows of marble seats above a deep channel of running water represent the standard Roman public toilet, designed for communal use by the city's male population. There were no partitions, no privacy, and no doors.
The facility was connected to the city's water supply and drainage system, which fed from the baths next door and kept the channel clean. Sponges on sticks served the purpose of toilet paper, rinsed in the channel's running water between uses. A colonnade ran around the room and a small pool in the centre may have been decorative or functional. The preserved state of the marble is remarkably good, and the dimensions suggest the room could accommodate twenty users at once — all sociably arranged around the walls.