The train from Rome to Ostia was a quick 25-minute ride, and the train was decorated with a beautiful spray paint veneer that I am kicking myself for not taking a picture of, despite the armed guards and large signs saying "No photography" which I couldn't read since I don't speak Italian. I did take a pic of the pedestrian bridge.
Ostia starts out with the Necropolis - the burial place for the dead just outside of the town. Of course, I hadn't looked at a map yet, so I didn't realize I was standing on someones tomb to take this picture.
We've been through a number of necropoli (is that a word?), but this is the first that we've been able to wander around. It's a great opportunity for pictures. It this were the 19th century, we would be looting...now we just take pix.
How did they get this picture, you may ask yourself?
My back has been hurting ever since.
Exiting the necropolis, we passed into Ostia proper. This land has been settled for at least 3,500 years thanks to salt flats nearby. Nothing like a bit of organic, Mediterranean sea salt to pull in the settlers. The Romans are believed to have made it the first colony of Rome around 700 BC. By 200 BC, it was a thriving commercial harbor, serving the exploding population of Rome with trade routes ranging from France to Egypt. This was my first clue that, in 2,000 years, we really haven't made all that much progress, and in some ways, we've slid backwards. Sure, we can travel much more easily, and I can play Angry Birds on my iPhone as long as I have a source of power to charge it, but when it comes down to what really matters - working toilets, food supplies, a hot bath, a nice place to live, beer and wine, sultry dancing girls, and no victimless crimes - the Ostians had it better than we do now.
Our first stop - the Baths of the Coachmen: imagine you are a traveler in ancient times. Having spent the last day on a dusty but well-paved road from Rome, you enter town and voila, here's a bathhouse. This is the floor of the Baths of the Coachmen.
The next thing in the road into Ostia is the well. Fortunately, to this day, it still dispenses water.
The Romans had to be some of the cleanest people in the world. Our next stop, the Neptune Baths:
The Neptune Baths featured workout rooms...
Since we'd spent the better part of a week on Catholic theology and theocracy class, when the opportunity to simulate a bit of paganism presented itself, our son leapt at the chance to kneel before the Temple of the Caesars.
We had lunch in the theatre, and convinced our son to step to the center and utter the line "Friends, Romans, Countrymen".
Later in the day, when we were a well past the theatre in our explorations, a young girl stepped to the stage and belted out an a capella song for her classmates also on a tour of Ostia that day. It sounded incredible. Without amplification, we could hear her clearly, her voice beautiful, from "halfway across town". Amazing! Who needs those electric twangy thangs, anyways, when you've got a Roman theatre to bounce your voice off of?
Just past the theatre, you enter the Square of the Guilds - the Roman Mall. This was the part of town set aside for deal-making and business. Mosaics depicted the products for sale in each storefront - fish, grains, measuring and weighing services, transportation, etc.
After a visit to the mall, we stopped by the Wash & Wait - the laundry where you could have your massive toga washed in the pits to the rear, and dyed in the urns in the foreground in Any Color You Like, as Pink Floyd would have said, as long as it's one of the colors in the eight urns at hand.
Next we wandered into the residential section of Ostia (sounds very modern, doesn't it - retail, residential, etc. all segregated?). This homeowner liked wrestling, and would have been a big fan of sports in today's world. This is his foyer...it's like that guy you know who lives and breathes his team's exploits, has the flag and the bumper sticker and the license plate and the tatoo...except that the modern-day redneck's sports-junk is going to be in the trash in a year or two, and this Roman's wrestling memorabilia is still here after 2,000 years...and I still think he was wasting his time and money.
Here's the rest of his flooring...
...and a private toilet, flushing, that drains straight to the river and then the Med, which is OK if there are only a million or so of you using the loo every day.
Just around the corner from his house, another fishmonger, this time with the original marble table used to clean and cut the fish, with 2,000 year old knife scars in the marble.
Ostia just goes on and on, with each new street revealing a fascinating aspect of life in the Roman empire at its height. Again and again, we were amazed at things they had that we take for granted as "modern conveniences", yet they enjoyed them 2,000 years ago as part of public life, and the stuff they had has survived 2,000 years of nature to still be enjoyable today. There's not much in my house that would survive that test of time.
Here's the Roman condo - two stories, multi-family...
Communal baths - cold, warm, and hot, downstairs...I'm not sure about you, but I have lived places where a communal bath would not necessarily be a bad thing.
OK, I'm kidding - those were the communal men's baths. The women and children had to share a smaller bathhouse, but they did get pretty pictures of Venus on the wall instead of bulls and centaurs.
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