Ancient Italian City Rivals Pompeii

[Viggen]

The ruins of Ostia Antica, on the outskirts of Rome, remain as captivating as I remembered from decades ago. As a teenager growing up in the Italian capital, I would join classmates to perform school plays in Ostia Antica

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

Well it's not hard to believe since Ostia is at the mouth of the Tiber River, which means its a major trade center like Pompeii.

[phil25]

Well it's not hard to believe since Ostia is at the mouth of the Tiber River, which means its a major trade center like Pompeii.

 

I have been to Ostia Antica three times, it has NEVER disappointed. I have recommended friends visiting Rome to go there - all have come back amazed.

 

Whether it is "better" than Pompeii I don't know. I would put it this way, I think:

 

Pompeii shows us a fair-sized Italian town of the early empire - and allows us to wander its streets and understand something of its dynamic. (We can see the distribution of brothels, temples, markets, large and small houses and learn a great deal about the experience of life in the first century AD).

 

Herculaneum gives us an insight into daily life, because of the wood and other objects preserved - the half-timbered house; the suburban baths; the paintings in the guild-hall.

 

Ostia, on the other hand is Rome itself, with its tenement blocks (insulae) and warehouses, theatre and main-street. The period is later than Pompeii, society had changed, and this is not small-town Italy.

 

Each provides us with a wonderful, separate and miraculous insight into a past time.

 

But I would also urge those interested to visit some of the cities in Jordan - for instance Palmyra (you'll find out what Herod's temple in Jerusalem may have looked like); or Ephesus (some wonderful houses found recently); or Dura Europos in Syria - again a different experience and much later in time.

 

We are SO lucky to have so much that has survived. Our job is to understand it.

 

Phil