As I mentioned in the finish to my last post, we opted for a tour of Ostia Antica, the first and for many centuries primary port for the city of ancient Rome and located on the Tiber River at its mouth. (Ostia means river mouth, for the trivia driven.) In fact, Ostia may have been Rome’s first “colona”, that is, their colony city built (as opposed to conquered) outside Rome. Ostia was prosperous for much of the time after its establishment, but, thanks to silting and flooding, always problematic as a port. Claudius and Trajan established a second port at Portus and Trajan later built what is now Rome’s primary port, Civitavecchia, soon after. Still, the city remained well populated until the end of the Western Roman Empire. The sea is over three miles away now and, thanks to a flood in 1557 that changed the course of the Tiber, Ostia is no longer on the river. The flooding had one benefit, at least to modern archeologists (and tourists), in that much of the city was buried and hence preserved .
Oh Where Has All the Marble Gone? The ruins of Ostia Antica are almost all of brick. Being a once prosperous Roman city, many of its structures, from temples to homes, had marble facades, columns, and the like. The marble was fine Carrara marble. During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Ostia became a de facto quarry for obtaining marble. One recipient: the leaning Tower of Pisa.
Our tour group was small, only fourteen people, which was quite nice. The consensus was that the tour guide was excellent but she was a very’a Italian’a accented’a guid’a who I struggled to understand. Nevertheless, it was an excellent tour overall. The day was sunny and warm, a beautiful day for a guided stroll through a fascinating site.
Between Frances and me is a stature of the goddess Minerva.
We started our tour by entering the “necropolis” end of the city, shown at the bottom of the layout.
There are many acres of buildings and grounds. Much has yet to be excavated.
Here we see typical brickwork, both in the walls and the floors. Inside structures, the walls would have been covered with decorated stucco or other covering.
Left: A casket in the necropolis. Right: I include this picture for my cat-loving friends (Brian, Curtis, et al.) Cats were brought in to control grain-eating rats. One story was that an entire boatload of cats from Africa was once imported for this purpose.
Left: Only a few statues survive although others may remain buried. Right: Buildings incorporated these corner stones to protect them from passing carts.
Ostia’s theater, outside and inside. Capacity was 4,000. Mussolini gave several speeches here to embellish his wannabe Caesar status.
Left: A statue base with a history of Rome. Right: The arch in the wall is not decorative. (Remember that walls were covered.) The Roman arch was not only for bridges, gateways and domes. In this case, the arch directs forces from the floors above to load bearing foundations. The arch was commonly used above doorways for the same purpose.
Left: Public toilets, women on the left and men on the right. Yes, there was once a wall in between. Right: A few dozen columns have been re-erected.
Many of the villas most certainly would have made the WSJ’s mansion section, with scores of rooms on multiple levels and a drained courtyard in the middle.
This is a restaurant with, on the right, a wine amphora and, on the left, one of two ovens.
Almost all the mosaics were covered for the winter. Several better-drained ones were viewable. Most of Ostia’s mosaics were black and white. On the left is the more common black on white. To one to the right is the reverse.
Left: A stone mason’s mark. Right: A mill stone for grain.
These are bus-window shots of two medieval fortresses we passed. The one on the left in Ostia and, on the right, at our port in Civitavecchia.
I’ll finish with pictures of these whimsical structures we passed as we left Ostia.
