There are places where the history of ancient Rome, our history, is not only visible but tangible. You can breathe it in and, with a little imagination, you can live it. The archaeological park of Ostia Antica is exactly one of these places.
Very similar to the archaeological sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, to the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli or to the beautiful archaeological park of Paestum, visiting Ostia Antica will take you back in time 2,000 years.
Perhaps you didn’t know it, but tradition attributes the founding of Ostia to king Ancus Marcius, around the 7th century BC, who is said to have created Rome’s first colony here along with the salt flats along the Tiber. Archaeologists, however, date the earliest visible fortified core — the so-called castrum — to the second half of the 4th century BC. The city then expanded enormously in imperial times thanks to its port, where goods arrived from every corner of the empire.
I know it will seem strange, but it was right at this spot that the Tiber flowed into the sea in ancient times, however unlikely that appears given today’s distance of the archaeological area from the coast (over the centuries the silting of the river has pushed the shoreline back by several kilometres).
Today the park of Ostia Antica is one of the most beautiful and famous in the world, because it preserves some of the most fascinating elements for discovering Roman civilisation: the town planning of cities and how they evolved over time.
To make the most of it I recommend a guided tour by train from Rome, which lets you discover the curiosities and the most interesting monuments without getting lost in the countless little streets. Yes, because Ostia Antica is a real city, with roads, houses, theatres and even public toilets: to see all of it, I assure you, would take far more than a single day.
But enough with the preambles: let’s go and discover the things to see in Ostia Antica.
Fancy knowing a little more?
Let’s go!
The building of Ostia Antica
As you enter the archaeological park of Ostia Antica you’ll immediately feel catapulted into a completely different world.
The road you walk along at the entrance is the so-called decumanus maximus. Perhaps you didn’t know it, but the Romans were particularly meticulous and systematic when it came to founding a new city. Town planning was always structured in the same way, with two roads — the decumanus maximus and the cardo maximus — that crossed at the point where the forum stood and divided the city into four quadrants.
In this way there were two main streets crossing the city from east to west and from north to south, with four entrance gates. Examples of this kind of layout are found across almost all of Europe, but among the cities I’ve visited I’d point you to Rimini, where Roman ingenuity is particularly evident.
And in Ostia Antica?
Well, in Ostia Antica you’ll find exactly this kind of town planning, with the walls of the houses, the columns of the temples and baths, the statues of public figures, inscriptions and mosaics that accompany you at every corner of the city.
In short, the archaeological park of Ostia is truly enormous, and inside it you’ll find all sorts of buildings: the most striking is undoubtedly the theatre, with its bare tiers and the three great marble masks in the background, reminding us how sacred and beloved theatrical performance was in the classical age.
Let me tell you about it now.
The theatre of Ostia Antica
The theatre of Ostia Antica was built in the age of Augustus, and an inscription attributes its construction to Agrippa, the emperor’s son-in-law and powerful minister, who died in 12 BC. Restored and enlarged several times (it was the emperor Commodus, at the end of the 2nd century, who brought it to a capacity of about 4,000 spectators), it was once enriched with sculptures, epigraphs and marble slabs, and hosted both comic and tragic performances.
I was lucky enough to stop for a break just as a school group of about thirty Indian children was performing dances and choral songs, with Latin, English and Indian music.
The emotion was indescribable!
That’s how children who came from the other side of the world, simply with their voices and their gestures, can breathe new life into a place forgotten for centuries.
After two thousand years, the acoustics inside the theatre of Ostia Antica are still perfect, and the sensations so overwhelming that they moved me to tears. Who knows whether those who built it could ever have imagined that, two thousand years later, people would dance on those stones to the rhythm of pop songs and Gregorian chant!
One interesting thing to know is that the theatre was certainly not so bare: the tiers were covered with precious marble, the actors performed in Latin with their voices amplified by the masks, and the costumes were flamboyant. With a little imagination you can still picture it… and it will fill you with nostalgia.
But not all is lost!
Since the early 1900s, when it was brought back to light, the theatre of Ostia Antica has once again hosted classical performances on summer evenings. I so hope to be able to attend one of these evenings and to hear (perhaps in Latin) the still very funny lines of the comedies of Plautus.
The Square of the Guilds
Right behind the theatre opens one of the places that struck me most in all of Ostia: the Piazzale delle Corporazioni, the Square of the Guilds.
Imagine a large portico that surrounded a temple, with dozens of small offices facing the courtyard. Each of these spaces belonged to the shipowners and merchants who did business in the port of Ostia, many of them coming from far away: Carthage, Alexandria in Egypt, Sardinia, Gaul, the city of Sabratha in Africa.
How did they make themselves recognisable?
In front of each office, on the floor, there is a mosaic that worked a bit like a company logo today: ships, dolphins, amphorae, the lighthouse of Portus and even an elephant (the emblem of the merchants of Sabratha) told passers-by what goods that office dealt in and where they came from. It’s a kind of ancient trade fair turned to stone, and walking through it really gives you the sense of how much Ostia was the beating heart of Rome’s commerce.
The Roman houses
Wandering among the ancient domus of Ostia Antica will be like travelling back in time.
The domus can not only be seen from the outside, but you’ll be able to step inside, lean out of the windows and, with a little imagination, take in that lost world, so distant yet still so close and relevant.
Like the modern cities of Europe, Ostia Antica too was divided into districts. Walking along the paved streets you can pass through the working-class neighbourhoods of the city, marked by the remains of the ancient insulae. These were the “low-cost housing” of the time, of which today, sadly, we preserve only the ground floor. The most famous is the House of Diana, a multi-storey building that gives you a sense of how people lived crowded one on top of the other.
But that’s not all!
Besides the dwellings, in Ostia Antica you can still clearly see shops that are 2,000 years old, the spaces occupied by the craftsmen’s workshops and even the ruts left by their carts, made indelible on the road surface.
In Ostia Antica you can step inside public buildings such as the baths, the theatre and the gymnasiums where the ancient Romans already took care of their bodies. In short, a slice of humanity so close to our own way of life, yet so distant in time as to seem unreal.
Among the city’s alleys you can even find the public latrines, a testament to how socially advanced Roman civilisation already was.
In the end, the impression I got is that, deep down, not so much has changed over the last 2,000 years.
What not to miss
Among the most important buildings in Ostia Antica, besides the magnificent theatre and the Square of the Guilds, you absolutely can’t miss the beautiful Baths of Neptune. This complex still preserves stunning mosaics — above all the one depicting Neptune driving a chariot pulled by sea horses, best admired from above from a panoramic terrace — and the rooms devoted to bodily care and physical exercise are still recognisable.
Like every great city, Ostia Antica too was at risk of fire. That’s why the ancient Romans built the barracks of the vigiles, the corps that in Rome served both as firefighters and night watch. Today the building can still be visited, although only the ground floor remains: the large courtyard and the fountains used for water supply and ablutions are clearly recognisable.
Finally, let me point you to the Thermopolium of the Via di Diana.
If you think bars are a modern invention, you’re quite wrong. The ancient Romans loved public life and had already devised places that served as social gathering spots. The Thermopolium was a sort of bar and hot-food counter of the time: it’s so well preserved, with its counter and even a fresco listing the food on offer, that it makes you realise how little our way of life has really changed in two thousand years.
Why Ostia Antica was abandoned
You’ll be wondering how such an important city could have ended up buried under the sand.
Its story is tied precisely to the port. Already in imperial times the mouth of the Tiber tended to silt up, so the emperors Claudius and then Trajan had a huge new artificial harbour built a little further north, Portus, with its famous hexagonal basin, which ended up absorbing most of the maritime traffic. With the decline of the empire, between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, Ostia lost its function, was depopulated also by pirate raids, and was slowly covered by the river’s debris and by malarial marshes.
The city came back to light above all with the great excavation campaigns of 1938–1942, and it’s to those that we owe the extraordinary state of preservation we can admire today.
Neglect at Ostia Antica
It has to be said, though, that the sheer scale of this heritage also has a downside: during my visit I found some areas of Ostia Antica in a state of semi-abandonment.
I felt genuinely disheartened in front of a mosaic overgrown with weeds or a fresco left exposed to the elements. Some explanatory panels were small and faded, and several frescoes looked poorly protected. In recent years, thankfully, the Park has launched new restoration and enhancement work, but the message remains: we should all do more to protect and preserve this and the other archaeological sites, which are part not only of our artistic heritage but of our historical memory.
If you love this kind of place, I also recommend the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, which gathers many of the masterpieces from Pompeii, and the Roman Museum of Lyon, which tells the story of another great city of the empire.
Practical information for Ostia Antica
To get to Ostia Antica by public transport you can take the Rome–Lido railway (now called Metromare) from Porta San Paolo/Piramide, San Paolo or Eur Magliana, and get off at the Ostia Antica stop: the journey takes about half an hour. From the station the park ticket office is just a few steps away, so you won’t have the problem of finding parking.
The full ticket costs €18 (reduced to €2 for EU visitors aged 18 to 25) and is valid for 8 days, giving access to all the areas and museums of the Park. Entry is free for under-18s and on the first Sunday of the month. The site is open from Tuesday to Sunday (closed on Mondays), with seasonal hours: in summer until 7 pm, in winter until 4.30 pm (the ticket office closes an hour earlier). I’d recommend checking hours and closures on the official website of the Park.
One last thing: if you’d rather not worry about trains and tickets, the half-day guided tour from Rome leaves from Piramide metro and includes the train, entry and a guide: at the end you’re free to stay in the park or head to the sea for a day in the sun.
So, what do you say? Fancy a leap two thousand years back in time?
