Feelings of Today: History has been and I hope always will be a joy to explore. Reading and watching shows about the past can only take you so far compared to the tingling you get walking amongst the places where things happened. Even though we cannot travel in time, we can bridge the gap to the people who were and who we are now. It is a magnificent feeling for me when achieved.
Full Day’s Events: Oatmeal in our bellies, we topped up with cappuccinos and two pastries, one pistachio cream filled and one with chocolate. Time to set off to a place very close by and see some once covered ruins...ancient Ostia Antica!
This first colony of Rome, in the 7th century BCE after the Roman Kingdom beat up the locals close to the sea, but it didn’t start getting attention until a military camp was set up in the 4th century BCE during the Roman Republic days. Since the city of Rome needed more stuff to feed its people it grew to a thriving city of 100k in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Over the recent centuries many Roman nobles took marble and art from here for their Pallazzo’s (palaces) until more serious work began to excavate starting in the late 1800’s, after the area was used for salt ponds by the papacy.
Entry paid, we walked along via Via Ostiensis, past the necropolis, and saw what awaited us past the Porta Romana (Roman Gate). The lover of history inside me was jumping with glee. I had been to Pompeii (67 hectares) and Heracleum (a few hectares) 14 years ago, but this site contained the remnants of Roman era urban living that dwarfed the other two with 150 hectares of historical ruins. Yippee!
Once we wandered through the family mausoleums and individual micro monuments, of who did what in stone, we meandered among the houses that once housed the living. We should have bought the nine euro guidebook at the ticket entry but, with an often paused Rick Steves free audio guide and our previous visits to ancient Roman things, we were fine on our own playing amateur archeologist and reading informative plaques.
I was also starting to realize we had the place almost to ourselves. Besides the three buses of European teenagers on spring break there were perhaps 150 others on site, about one per hectare. After saying this thought out loud, my wife told me it was probably because there was no disaster here and just the long decline of a large city slowly covered by silt and sand. She continued with the wise thought that after the Roman empire fell and the river changed course it probably wasn’t thrilling enough for most. I agreed.
I do have to tell you all that this site should be a must for folks that like ancient history. Over the seven and a half hours we wandered around the site, with a pizza and cappuccino break in the cafeteria, every turn was another wow whether it was history, architecture, art, flora, fauna, or just imagining yourself in this place back in time amongst this wonder of an urban Roman experience.
This site has residential buildings with three stories intact that you could climb and had observation areas. There was a theater, fire hall, forum, temples, cult facilities, middle class areas, rich villas, and shoulder to shoulder squalor. Every turn revealed new things. Moving among and within businesses for trading, taverns, baths, manufacturing, shipbourne merchants who traded far and wide advertised their wares through tile flooring, cleaning clothes with vinegar and/or urine, and administration facilities felt wonderful. There was even a synagogue off to the side and would have been on the shoreline back then. Ancient Ostia Antica is by far the most impressive example of a Roman urban centre I have ever seen and on my top list of ancient places to visit.
On our way back from the distant synagogue I received some whistling and come hither waves from a group of ladies. Couldn’t they see I was with my attractive wife? They all couldn’t want to spend some time with me, a half-Acadian aged Adonis who was soon to turn 55, right? That last thought turned out to be very correct. They didn’t want me, or my spouse, to spend any more time with them or ancient Ostia Antica…they were closing! Turns out 515pm was their closing time and not 530, as I had read when doing research. The fun had to end sometime.
Back at our place we relaxed, made supper (same as last night), and drank some wine. Today was a very good day. 10.1km and 11 flights of stairs.
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