Ostia Antica and a Taste of Home

This week, I had a little taste of home because Tom came to visit me. I’ve gotten used to living here by now, so I almost felt like a tourist again walking around with him to see the sites. He’s never been to Rome before, so I guess I was more like a “tour-guide.” We did a ton of cool things and found some really good restaurants around the city. The first day I took him to Campo De Fiori and we shopped around in the open air market. Then we had lunch at Monte Carlo’s, which is only the BEST pizzeria in the city! After a nap, Tom and I went to dinner and enjoyed some Roman night life. Over the weekend, we walked around the city- all the way up to Villa Borghese, which was beautiful. The garden was so quite it almost felt like you had left Rome. We also took a day trip to Ostia Antica, which is something I probably wouldn’t have done if Tom wasn’t here. It was really awesome- Ostia is an ancient port town, and the ruins that are left reflect warehouses, theaters, apartments, markets and baths that were once used by the thriving port of 60,000 people. The city is named after its location. Ostium means mouth, as the city is located at the mouth of the Tiber River. It served as a naval base and protected Rome from attacks from the sea. After a while, however, the city became more commercial than military and it became popular for its control of big business and trade.
I wish it was easy to explain how big this city (well, now ruins) actually was. It felt like it could have easily been the size of Philadelphia, only with bigger stone buildings and an amphitheatre. We walked the entire length of the city, and even tried to venture off the main roads and imagine the residential areas- picturing where the gamblers even could have hung out. Some of the ruins we saw included the Necropolis (which was right in the front because the dead were not allowed to be buried in the city walls), Porta Romana and the Republican Warehouse (ruins of where the goods from the port would be stored), The baths of Neptune, the Theatre (a boy even went to the front of the Theatre and sang a song from the Phantom of the Opera in front of the whole crowd of tourists. I felt like I was watching a show just like the people of the city did two thousand years ago), the mill, the forum and the baths. We climbed to the top of the some of the ruins and got some great views of the water and the ancient city. It took quite a few hours to see the sights, but it was well worth it. You’d think I’d get tired of looking at ruins after a while, but they just keep getting more interesting. This city was particularly cool because of its proximity to the water and the importance it had on trade in the Mediterranean at the time. Overall it’s a site well worth going to see if you want to get a different perspective from the ruins of Rome. It’s only about a 45 minute train ride away, and we were back in Rome for dinner....