The wonderfully saved vestiges of Ostia Antica, Rome’s old seaport, lie twenty miles from the advanced city, in the knolls between the Tiber River and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Established, most likely in the fourth century BC, as a military settlement to watch the stream mouth against seaborne intrusions, Ostia filled in as a bustling business port when Rome controlled all the Mediterranean in the second century BC. With the fall of Rome, the port was surrendered and shepherds with their groups settled in. This once flourishing city of around 60,000 individuals gives a look at Roman ways of life with docks, distribution centers, condos and houses, shops, showers and sanctuaries. As you stroll along Ostia’s primary road, the Decumanus Maximus, your feet sink into profound trenches left by the trucks used to ship stock and things among Rome and Ostia and you will find the second best-saved old Roman town after Pompeii.
