Sunday 5 December 2010

Imperial Aspirations: The Chiewitz Outdoor Privy in Espoo

With the upcoming royal wedding all over the media (especially the Readers' Letters in The Press), we find ourselves harbouring a desire for imperial glamour. Toilets for ordinary mortals are all very well, but our aspirations today are towards the God-given right to sit on a really fancy loo!

Picture by Islander at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexdass.jpg?uselang=sv

This hexagonal building may look like a common-or-garden summerhouse, but actually it is a privy on an imperial scale! Designed by Georg Theodor Chiewitz, it was built at Träskända Gård in a town rather fittingly called Espoo, in Finland, solely for the comfort of Czar Alexander II, who visited in 1863. We hope he enjoyed it!

Sources:
All information and picture from Wikipedia, which in turn has used material from Nordisk Familjebok (http://runeberg.org/nfbe/0111.html).

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