Welcome back from your intermission break. Act III is just about to start.
ACT III: Ostia Antica
Ostia Antica is the site of Imperial Rome’s port city, about 24 km or 15 miles west of the capital. In antiquity, Ostia sat right at the outflow of the Tiber River into the Mediterranean; today, it lies inland thanks to centuries of river sediment.
Ostia Antica is a bit like Pompeii in that you get to wander through the extensive ruins of an ancient Roman town. However, the reason that these ruins remain is completely different from that of Pompeii. As you know, a fearsome eruption of Vesuvius preserved Pompeii beneath ash and rock until excavations started to reveal it in the mid 18th century. Ostia’s fate was less dramatic. Once the Roman Empire fell apart in the 5th century, Ostia’s principal and only client ceased to exist. The port town was abandoned. Over the centuries that followed, almost all of the valuable marble decorations and cladding were repurposed (which means pilfered) for other constructions throughout the region. All that remains today are many of the brick walls that supported handsome marble finishes as well as colored fresco panels.
You can wander down residential neighborhood streets, into the forum and theater, and among the various commercial structures. For the most part there are no ceiling vaults and roofs remaining; you have to use your imagination.
Ostia served both to receive Rome-bound goods (and people) from all over the empire, as well as the embarkation point for exports from the capital region. Imagine how many different types of people, animals and products moved through Ostia at the height of the empire.
As Rome’s port city, the population of Ostia included both permanent residents as well as temporary residents like merchants who came to trade from across the Mediterranean. Most of Ostia’s population was comprised of the working class, the majority of which lived in insulae, or apartment buildings. (※)
Like other Roman cities, the forum was the center of both political and civic life. Though Ostia had existed for centuries, the forum did not begin to develop as a civic center until the 1st century B.C.E. Just as in the Forum Romanum in Rome, the forum at Ostia featured a basilica (judicial court), a curia (Senate House), temples, and a large open space in the center. To the south of the forum was the Temple of Roma (the personification of the city of Rome) and Augustus.
To the north was the Capitolium, a temple dedicated to the worship of three deities: Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, known as the Capitoline Triad. The remains of the Capitolium date to the emperor Hadrian’s reign, though it likely replaced an earlier temple or shrine.
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As always in the Imperial Roman world, the public baths played a prominent role in daily life in Ostia Antica.
Other rooms of the baths extend in the distance.
To date, excavations in Ostia have uncovered 26 bath complexes. Though none of them are imperial baths on the scale of those in Rome, like the Baths of Caracalla, bathing was a central part of Roman life in any location. Most of the bath complexes featured the typical changing room, hot baths, warm baths, and cold baths, but only the larger structures had room for an open-air exercise area.
One of the bath complexes is the so-called Baths of Neptune constructed in the 2nd century C.E. The baths received their modern name thanks to a mosaic of Neptune, the god of the sea, surrounded by sea creatures and mythological beings. In the center, Neptune rides on a quadriga (a chariot led by four hippocamps, which are half horse, half sea creature). He is surrounded by sea nymphs, Tritons (sea-gods), dolphins, and other real and mythological sea creatures.
Like the majority of mosaics in Ostia, it was made of only black and white tesserae. Black and white mosaics were less expensive than mosaics with colorful tesserae, but even opulent buildings feature black and white mosaics, suggesting that it reflects a shift in aesthetic preferences rather than cost. The background is white with no sense of depth. The figures appear as silhouettes in black tesserae, though white tesserae are used to provide outlines to the muscles, drapery, and hair.
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A different, smaller bath, perhaps private or more exclusive than the larger public baths:
Maybe the inner walls were decorated like these original frescoes — nicely displayed in the handsome little museum in Ostia Antica:
These are some of the public latrines — no privacy here. Sanitary practices were very different in Imperial Rome!
Not far from the forum was a theatre. Unlike Greek theatres, which are typically constructed on top of a natural hillside, Roman theatres were free-standing. Though it was originally constructed in the 1st century B.C.E., it was renovated and expanded in the late 2nd century C.E. As was typical of Roman theatres, it was shaped like a half-circle. (※)
The Piazza of the Corporations: Ostia was a city whose lifeblood was commerce. The so-called Piazza of the Corporations, just behind the stage of the theatre, was the central market for services and negotiations. 61 small rooms surround a large square open space. These rooms functioned as offices for the merchants, shippers, and traders who conducted business out of Ostia.
Each of these offices featured a black and white floor mosaic which helped to identify the business conducted within. Many of the mosaics depict ships, a fitting subject for a city that served as the port of Rome and a major trade hub. One mosaic even portrays an elephant which suggests the merchant or trader who operated from this office imported elephants and other animals from North Africa for Roman gladiatorial spectacles.
A couple more images:
Not all wall art was spectacularly good!
Ostia Antica is well worth the visit. It’s easily reached in about 30 minutes via a suburban rail line from central Rome. While Pompeii is definitely worth the visit too, getting to and from Pompeii takes much more time than what’s needed for Ostia. And there are far fewer fellow tourists which makes it easier to lose yourself in an imagined ancient Ostia.
INTERVAL
After our lunch at the café overlooking the Pantheon, we walked over to Piazza Navona. In antiquity, this space was the Stadium of Domitian. At times, the stadium was flooded, and mock naval battles were performed for the Roman people. After the fall of Imperial Rome, the stadium fell into ruin. About a millennium later, Pope Innocent X commissioned architects like Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini to transform the square into a centerpiece of Baroque Rome.
This is one of our favorite spaces in the historic center of Rome — just like for a lot of other people. Still, it is grand enough to accommodate us all.
Bernini’s famous Fountain of the Four Rivers anchors the center. The four muscular figures are the rivers of four different continents: the Nile for Africa, the Danube for Europe, the Ganges for Asia, and the Río de la Plata for the Americas.
We happened upon a little museum tucked into one corner of the Piazza in an old Palazzo: Museo di Roma. Almost no one else had discovered this museum when we visited, so we could enjoy some lovely quiet. The museum includes many paintings and drawings of Rome from the past centuries. We really liked this long horizontal landscape from the early 19th century. This is what Rome looked like then: just a small town — nothing like great Imperial Rome nor the modern Roman metropolis.
ACT IV: The Roman Forum
We found ourselves with a few hours to fill on the morning of our departure day. It was a sunny spring Sunday – Easter Sunday in fact. So we, along with thousands of other visitors who had not opted to crowd into Saint Peter’s Square, imagined ourselves in the heart of ancient Imperial Rome.
We had found an Augmented Reality (AR) iPhone app for the Forum and Colosseum. The idea is that wherever you’re standing in the forum, you can hold up your phone and see an imagined reconstruction of the buildings and monuments around you. The functionality of the app was a little rough, and the number of 3D rendered models limited, but it did hint at what it might have been like to walk amid some of Imperial Rome’s most impressive buildings.
Here are a few examples, with a photo of what exists today along side a screenshot from the app from the exact same vantage.
While we’re out and about, we might as well check out the Colosseum — present and past.
Post-theater dinners
Our intentions for our third dinner were to enjoy traditional recipes in an attractive setting. Diana’s Place Bistrot looks at first like an upscale wine and food shop.
But tables fill in between walls of wine bottles and glass cases of cheeses and preserves. Servers in black and white seemed distant and cold at the start, but were charming by the end of the meal.
April 2025