  Topological drawings are representations of graphs in the plane, where
vertices are represented by points, and edges by simple curves connecting the
points. A drawing is simple if two edges intersect at most in a single point,
either at a common endpoint or at a proper crossing. In this paper we study
properties of maximal plane subgraphs of simple drawings $D_n$ of the complete
graph $K_n$ on $n$ vertices. Our main structural result is that maximal plane
subgraphs are 2-connected and what we call essentially 3-edge-connected.
Besides, any maximal plane subgraph contains at least $\lceil 3n/2 \rceil$
edges. We also address the problem of obtaining a plane subgraph of $D_n$ with
the maximum number of edges, proving that this problem is NP-complete. However,
given a plane spanning connected subgraph of $D_n$, a maximum plane
augmentation of this subgraph can be found in $O(n^3)$ time. As a side result,
we also show that the problem of finding a largest compatible plane
straight-line graph of two labeled point sets is NP-complete.
