my favorite thing was the raw sewage poored out peoples windows that just ran down the middle of the street.
I remember my dad telling stories of having to watch out for people tossing “night soil” out second and third story windows in Italy when he was in the Navy, circa early fifites.
It’s sort of comical, how many people seem to believe that other countries had some medieval system that was much different. Feudalism was the rule, not the exception.
Which was eminently sensible compared to the gentry who peed in the stairwells of the palaces.
And those pouring out their chamber pots from their upper stories onto the streets below called “gardy loo” (thought to be a mis-quote of the French “Regardez vous”, or “look out”. All that lousy sanitation brought on the great plague of 1665, and the remedy was when London burned down in 1666, the great fire. I’ve always wondered if that is why the Brits refer to the toilet as “the loo”???