Ostia Antica

Listen to the gravel under your shoes, and then to the change as it turns to stone. The paving here is made of big, uneven slabs of dark volcanic rock, worn smooth by centuries of feet and cartwheels. Umbrella pines spread overhead. Their resin scents the warm air. Somewhere a cicada starts up, and then another. Around you, red and orange brick walls rise to shoulder height, sometimes higher. This is Ostia Antica, and you are walking through the streets of a real Roman town.

The name comes from the Latin word ostium, which means mouth. Ostia stood at the mouth of the river Tiber, where it met the sea. For Rome, this was a doorway. Grain, oil, wine and goods from across the Mediterranean came through here before they travelled upriver to the capital. If Rome was the stomach of the empire, Ostia was the throat. Without this town, the city of Rome could not feed itself.

Roman tradition says that Ostia was founded by Ancus Marcius, the fourth legendary king of Rome. But treat that as legend, not record. Archaeologists have found the remains of a small fortified military camp, called a castrum, dating to around the fourth century before Christ. That camp was the seed. Over the following centuries the town grew outward from it, and at its height it held tens of thousands of people.

The long street you are probably walking on now is the Decumanus Maximus, the main east-west road. It runs for well over a kilometre through the town. Look down at the stones. In places you can see shallow grooves left by wheels. Look to the sides, and you will see the stubs of columns that once held up covered walkways. Shopkeepers sold their goods under these porticoes, out of the sun and rain.

Here is something many visitors do not expect. Ostia was not a town of grand villas. Most people lived in apartment blocks, which the Romans called insulae. These buildings were made of brick and concrete, and many rose three or four storeys. Shops filled the ground floor. Families rented rooms above. In some blocks you can still find the bottom steps of staircases leading up to floors that are no longer there. It feels surprisingly modern.

Before long you will reach the theatre. It was first built in the time of Agrippa, the friend and general of the emperor Augustus, and was enlarged later. Climb the curved rows of seats if you can. From the top, the view runs over pine trees and ruins. Below the stage you will see large stone masks of tragedy and comedy. Today the theatre is still used for performances on some summer evenings.

Behind the theatre is the place that best explains Ostia. It is a wide square surrounded by a colonnade, known today as the Square of the Corporations. Around its edge were small offices for shipping firms and traders. Each office had a black and white mosaic on the floor in front of it. These mosaics worked like shop signs. You can still read them: ships, dolphins, a lighthouse, and the names of cities from North Africa and beyond.

Walk slowly around the square, and look for the elephant. It is a mosaic, and many people believe it advertised a trader from Sabratha, in modern Libya, perhaps one who dealt in ivory or wild animals for the arena. Scholars still debate the exact meaning. Either way, it is a small, clear picture of how far Ostia's business reached. The whole Mediterranean met here, on this floor.

Daily life is everywhere, if you know where to look. On the Via di Diana there is a building that many guides call a thermopolium, a kind of Roman snack bar. It has a marble counter, shelves, and a small courtyard. Elsewhere you will find a public latrine, with a long row of stone seats side by side and no walls between them. For Romans, this was a social place. People talked here.

Ostia was also a town of many faiths. Archaeologists have found more than a dozen small sanctuaries of Mithras, a god popular with soldiers and traders. These were dark, cave-like rooms with benches along the walls. Near the old shoreline, excavators also uncovered a synagogue. It is one of the oldest known synagogues in Europe. And Christian writers record that Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine, died here at Ostia.

So why is this town so quiet now? The answer is the river and the sea. Over the centuries the Tiber carried silt down to its mouth, and the coastline slowly moved away. The harbour became too shallow for large ships. The emperors Claudius and Trajan built a new port to the north, called Portus. Ostia slowly lost its purpose. In late antiquity people left, malaria spread through the marshes, and sand and earth covered the streets.

That burial is the reason you can walk here today. Without it, the stone and brick would have been carried away for new buildings long ago. Excavations over the last two centuries have uncovered a large part of the town, but not all of it. Much of ancient Ostia is still underground, beneath the fields and trees around you. Archaeologists are still working, and new finds still appear.

Before you leave, stop for a moment on one of the side streets, away from the main road. Rest a hand on a brick wall. Look at a doorway and imagine a shopkeeper opening the shutters in the morning. The pines are still moving above you, and the air is still warm. The sea is not far away, though you cannot see it. As you walk back toward the gate, listen again to the change under your feet, as Roman stone becomes modern gravel.