Feelings of Today: Sometimes you don’t finish something and want to go back. That can be a waste of time but not always because there are situations where it is the perfect thing to do. Learn to feel if it will become an indifferent repetition or a wonderful enhancement.
Full Day’s Events: With the Ancient Ostia Antica museum closed yesterday, and a significant portion of the site unseen by us, we fortified ourselves with oatmeal and coffee, then pastries and cappuccino, and reentered the site.
The museum, although not large, has the highest density of quality in Roman historical items we have seen and experienced. It rivals the Capitoline Museum in central Rome that we saw 11 years ago and everything was incredible to behold. There is also a large gang of cats that lives on site just outside the museum waiting to be fed so that was a bonus.
After a quick trip to the gift shop to pick up a 9 Euro guide book, we wandered around the areas not seen yesterday. Many tiled floors in situ, interesting buildings and ruins, several Mithras temples, and different villas and businesses were observed. Significant was a large complex that would have been near the sea, but tight against the shops and merchant houses, which has select entrances to a big courtyard that had a garden and multiple storied buildings on the outside. Think in your mind a gated condo community for upper middle class folks and you get the idea. I never would have thought such a thing would exist in ancient Roman times but here it was.
After five hours today, including a lunch break at the cafeteria, we could have spent another four more hours here to see everything. Instead we called our Ancient Ostia Antica experience complete. It is unfortunate we could not go to the other archeological sites in the area, with the same ticket like the Roman ship museum, but it is good to leave something for the next time.
Dropping off our backpacks at our place we visited the Pope’s castle. Started in 1483, by Ostia Antica’s Cardinal Giuliano della Roviere before he was Pope Julius the Second, the castle was finished in three years. Before the castle the modern Ostia Antica area was a Roman christian necropolis, then a basilica, then a village around the basilica, then walled in the 800’s, and a tower added in the 1400’s. The castle was built to protect Rome from invasions and raids up the Tiber, but the river changed course after 74 years. With the land becoming swampy the castle and village was abandoned, then used as a prison, then by two popes in the 1800’s for archeological digs in Ancient Ostia Antica once the swamp dried up and was used for salt harvesting. Now it is a museum. We could not see a lot but it was interesting.
After a break at our place we went to eat at Ristorante Monumento dal 1884, which was a small stones throw from our place. Unfortunately google was wrong and we had another hour before they opened. Fortunately, Drusilla al Borgo was a large stone's throw away from Monumento so we had drinks and a pizza pita like bread with hummus. At Monumento, we shared a seafood salad and our pasta mains was a tomato and squid pasta with lots of good deep flavours. The day was comfortably done. 9.2km walked and 13 floors climbed.
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