After jostling about with the crowds at the Vatican and the Spanish Steps, we were looking for something a little quieter today. We were also looking for something that we had not done before. Ostia Antica fit both of those criteria perfectly. It is located about an hour outside of Rome, but it is easily accessible by subway and city rail. With our host Bruno’s help, we figured out the connection and started our adventure.
Ostia literally means “mouth” and it is where the Tiber enters the that part of the Mediterranean called the Tyrrhenian Sea. During the Republican and early Imperial periods, the city of Ostia was the harbor for the city of Rome. All the grain and other food needed to feed the people of Rome was imported through Ostia. As ships from around their world landed there, it was also one of the most cosmopolitan of Roman cities. Though the trade through Ostia made many Roman quite wealthy, the town itself was more working-class. By the end of the first century, silt had largely filled the harbor making it increasingly difficult to land ships there, so Emperor Claudius ordered the creation of a new harbor a little north, near was is now Fiumicino International Airport. This new harbor, called simple Portus or “Port” started the decline of Ostia. After repeated sackings by pirates and barbarians, Ostia was abandoned.
Today it is not only one of the most important Roman archeological sites, but a surprisingly easy one to visit. Unlike the Roman ruins, protected by fences, visitors can wander freely through the ruins at Ostia. And pines seem to outnumber people there.
With all the recent rains, the site was also overrun by wildflowers. This was a typical scene in the necropolis, or “city of the dead” that was the cemetery just outside of the town walls.
Once inside what remains of the the town walls, we first passed the remains of dozens of warehouses. These were important, but not particularly interesting buildings even in their time. The first notable site was the remains of the Baths of Neptune. Like most Roman cities, Ostia had multiple baths. These were not merely places for cleaning, but were opportunities for Roman men to both work out and do business. John is standing on the west side of the baths, an enormous open area where boxers, wrestlers, and other athletes would have trained alongside ordinary Romans.
The east side had hot and cold pools, like a sauna today, and pipes heated the mosaic floor in the winter. As both our audio guide and the excellent signage reminded us, it was a staggering amount of slave labor that made this possible.
Not surprisingly, John really came to live when he saw the theater. There was originally a wall behind the stage separating the theater from the commercial square behind it. Apparently they still stage Roman plays in the theater at times, and they use it for other special events. There seemed to be some kind of presentation going on the day we were there, but we could not quite figure out what was happening. There were just a lot of slightly overweight, middle-aged Italians talking, gesturing, and, of course, smoking.
While the wealthy lived in beautiful, one story suburban villas, the urban poor were crammed into small apartments in ramshackle buildings sometimes ten stories high! They had no plumbing of any kind, nor were there cooking facilities. Many of these apartments were made of wood and often collapsed or burned. A few of the better ones were made of brick. We climbed to the top of the tallest one left, and looked over the remains of the residential neighborhood. It was perhaps in one of these buildings that Saint Monica, mother of Augustine of Hippo, died.
There was another, larger bathhouse nearby. This is one of the few remnants of a Roman latrine. The Romans had no sense of privacy and even defecating was a social occasion. They had no toilet paper, either, and they cleaned themselves with a rag shoved on the end of a stick. The hole in the front is for what we might call anal access. I have no idea if they bothered to clean the rag between uses.
After leaving we decided to go to Testaccio, a neighborhood not far from the old Jewish quarter. Like Trastevere, this area used to be working class, but has now become somewhat bohemian. It’s sort of the Echo Park of Rome. There is a famous farmer’s market there. It used to be located in an old building attached to a slaughterhouse, but has recently been moved to a somewhat antiseptic new facility. Our guidebook suggested this stall for some authentic Roman panini, and the sandwiches were quite good. And in Europe, who can argue with 3€ for a meal?
This was a stall, however, I do not think you would find in a California farmer’s market. Or if you did, there would certainly be protesters!
Testaccio is also the home of the so-called Protestant Cemetery. The Roman cemeteries were all Roman Catholic and refused burial to people of other faiths. So a number of foreign embassies bought land so that people from their countries who died in Rome could be buried. So the cemetery really is not simply Protestant as there are many Jewish and Orthodox graves here as well. A number of famous people are buried here. We never did quite locate the grave of John Keats, and since we were having the almost inevitable afternoon thunderstorm at this point, we finally gave up looking. As Californians, we were delighted to find the grave of Richard Henry Dana, the author of Two Years Before the Mast, the best description of life in Alta California before the American conquest.
We did discover the last resting place of Percy Shelley. John paid appropriate homage.
Our next stop was Rome’s second most important church, Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls. This church was built on the spot where the apostle was thought to have met martyrdom at the hands of the Roman authorities. There has been a church here since the days of the emperor Constantine, but the basilica has been rebuilt several times. The last reconstruction occurred after a devastating fire in 1823. While contributions came from all over the world to rebuild the church, American Roman Catholics were particularly generous.
The doors of the church commemorate the events in Paul’s life from his conversion on the road to Damascus to his beheading. His body is supposedly in a sarcophagus under the high altar.
The interior of the church is incredibly vast. Double rows of columns line the nave. The clerestory windows let in a surprising amount of light, even on a cloudy day like today.
Besides the body of the Saint, the other important relic in the church are the chains that supposedly bound Peter on his way to his crucifixion.
