You could be forgiven for thinking that using the bathroom is an activity so universal that the idiosyncrasies of travel do not apply. True, few of us have failed to ponder the celebrity-endorsed, one-of-a-kind toilets of Japan. And, sure, most of us understand on an almost instinctive level that some tourist cities have worse public restroom access than others. But when it comes down to the brass tacks of the issue, the restroom is a place of biological necessity, and the less said about what goes on within them, the better. //

Meanwhile, over in Italy, the rules surrounding basic bathroom use are as complex as they are delightfully eccentric. They can take you on a journey, for sure, such as attempts to decipher the peculiar signage or exploratory dives into the inner workings of exotic flushing mechanisms. Such things cannot be intuited; they must be learned. Here, then, is everything you need to know about bathrooms in the Italian peninsula.