Today we ventured further afield with a trip to Ostia Antica, the old port town of Roman Rome which had been recommended to us.
To get there required a couple of tubes and an overground train. Coming from London it is always a shock to find a major city with only two tube lines, in Rome imaginatively called “A” and “B”. This means that large areas of the city aren’t covered but what is there runs well and is pretty cheap too. An all day pass was only €6 which seem pretty good value.
Ostia is a sleeply little place half an hour from Rome and the Roman town is huge, dwarfing the Forum by some considerable margin. Once in you could wander the grounds freely going absolutely anywhere and that included traipsing over the beautiful mosaics of which there were literally dozens.
Had this been in the UK the place would have been under the watchful eye of English Heritage and I suspect that you wouldn’t have got anywhere near many areas.
The place is a fascinating insight into the Roman way of life with the small, low status, buildings right up to the marble lined and mosaic floored high status areas. It really has to be seen to understand the extent of it.
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