Podas Okus, M.A.: Ostia

So a bit about where I'm working this summer--I'm not in Rome, but in the ancient port city of Rome, Ostia, located about 15 miles from the city proper (about 30 minutes by train). Ostia was founded, as far as tradition goes, by the fourth king of Rome, Ancus Martius in the 7th century BCE. The problem with that is that the earliest archaeological remains of the city only go back to the middle of the 4th century BCE, so there's a bit of a discrepancy there (just a bit!).

At any rate, Ostia was near and dear to the inner workings of Rome, as it functioned as one of the primary ports for the city (though most of the grain would be offloaded in Puteoli down on the Bay of Naples or in Portus (during the empire)) and was a thriving city for centuries--as far as we can tell, it was probably abandoned in the 9th or 10th century as the Tiber began to silt up and Ostia lost its position on the coast. The modern remains of Ostia are quite remarkable, largely preserving the city as it was at its height in the 2nd century CE when the core of the city was built. In the subsequent centuries, buildings would be remodeled and changed, but the footprint and skeleton of the Hadrianic city remained. If you were to compare Ostia with Pompeii, you could make the distinction of Pompeii being essentially a snapshot of what it once was, frozen in time by Vesuvius whereas Ostia is like a palimpsest, continually being cleared over so but retaining traces of what it once was. Anyhow, Ostia is a fabulous place and it's largely off the beaten track for tourists (especially on Mondays when it's closed to everyone except us!). It lacks the frescoes of Pompeii and any original statuary (thanks centuries of popes), but it has some fine black and white mosaics. I'll be sharing more about Ostia as we go along, but for now, here are some pictures.