Investigation was performed on healthy and inflamed human gingivae. In the healthy mucosa lymphatic vessels generally appeared as flattened channels with a reduced lumen. Only in very inflamed tissue were some more evident vessels with a distended wall detectable. Ultrastructurally, most of the vessels had the characteristics of capillaries and they were delimited by a thin and irregular endothelial wall with large intercellular spaces. These observations indicate that in the gingival tissues, which are continuously exposed to inflammatory agents and need a really efficient draining system, the pathway of interstitial exudation and cell migration may include both the lymphatic vessel system and the intercellular spaces of the permeable junctional epithelium.