Looking for Ostia Antica

Yesterday, our intended destination was the ancient town of Ostia Antica, southwest of Rome. Since our host spoke wonderful English – his having spent fifteen years in various cities in the U.S.A. – we decided that his instructions to take the Via della Mare from the A1 Auto Strada were clear enough that we didn’t need to engage our GPS. You can probably guess how that turned out. Even though it seemed we were doing just fine and headed straight for Ostia, we ended up in the Village of San Marco with not the slightest notion of which way Ostia might be. We stopped at the Park in San Paolo, and, just to stretch our legs, set off to explore and take a break before we tried to stop being lost and figure out how to get to Ostia. The first thing we stumbled on was a pyramid. Though not quite as large as those famous ones in Egypt, it was nevertheless pretty darn visible over the other buildings. Sorry to tell you that we never did find out what the significance of the pyramid was to the city of San Paolo. The next thing we discovered was a trolley museum. Now I’m sure if you know anything about me, you know I’d never pass up such an opportunity. The museum happened to be adjacent to the train station. So, we thought, the logical thing to do was ask the ticket clerk how to get in. The clerk was only too happy to assist us by opening the gate so that we might pass through, even though you normally had to have a ticket. Of course, we didn’t know that what was she was doing so we waited for her to appear to escort us. When that didn’t happen, we went back to the window and once again she said that she’d help us. This time we noted the open gate and succeeded in gaining entrance. Soon we were prowling around the museum grounds with yours truly snapping loads of photos of all the old rail equipment. That is, I was snapping away until I began to notice a certain nervousness on the part of the museum guards. But I shrugged off the notion and went on shooting. Moments later, the guard approached me and explained in Italian that I had to stop shooting. When I indicated that I didn’t understand him, he started repeating the English word “impossible” and pointing to the camera. I got the point, then, and put the camera away. Later, as we left the train station, Concetta pointed out the large sign showing a camera and the universal sign for something that’s not allowed, the circle with the diagonal line through it. Then we understood. You weren’t supposed to take photos of the trains. Just how the guards decided to extend this prohibition to the museum’s antique trolleys from the 1920s and 1930s is way beyond me, but the photo shoot was fun while it lasted.

By the time we arrived back at the car, we had decided that we needed to ask someone how to proceed to Ostia. I approached a group of park maintenance workers and presented the question. Now you've all seen that bit in "Romancing the Stone" where Michael Douglas tells Kathleen Turner, "Lady, you're way the Hell and gone from Cartagena" Well, that's just about how the much amused maintenance workers reacted to my question about Ostia. Still, they did sort of point in the general direction we should travel. So, we jumped in the car and set out. But after another twenty minutes of wandering in what turned out to be largely the wrong direction, I suggested that Concetta feed the GPS some fictitious address in Ostia and we’d see if we could get the show on the road. And that’s just what we did. Then for the rest of the morning we headed in the general direction of Ostia, we thought, which seemed to work well until we reached an intersection where signs indicated that Ostia was in BOTH directions, left and right. You can probably guess what happened next, we took the wrong/right direction. Thankfully, I decided to try the other right direction after only traveling in the wrong/right direction for ten minutes or so. Once our direction was reversed, we soon arrived at Ostia Antica.

If you’ve ever been to Pompeii, I can tell you that Ostia Antica looks about the same with some distinct differences. First of all, not as many people go there. I was absolutely overjoyed to see but one tour bus when we pulled into the parking lot. The bus turned out to have disgorged a big bunch of fairly well-behaved German teenagers who we found wandering the site in small groups not paying much attention to the wonders of archaeology. They seemed, in fact, to mostly be paying attention to each other, which we didn’t mind at all. Other than the one tour bus, I counted perhaps another dozen cars in the parking lot and that was about it. So, we spent the entire afternoon wandering amongst some wonderful ruins which appeared to cover a tract of land roughly equivalent to eight or ten football fields. Most of the buildings had been constructed with Roman red clay bricks which in ancient times had been covered with either plaster or thinly sliced marble. Not many of either of these wall “dressings” were still in evidence, but it was nice to be able to see the ancient construction techniques. One thing that especially impressed me was the Roman’s practice of constructing walls with nice even layers of brick on both wall facings, but they used rubble mixed with concrete to give the wall width and strength. You could easily see that absolutely nothing went to waste. If they had to knock down some earlier wall or building to erect a new structure, they always used the broken building materials of the old structure to fill the voids between any new walls. That’s got to be one of the earliest incidences of recycling I know about.

Another big difference between Ostia and Pompeii is that Ostia is covered with very large trees, ones that I think are called “umbrella pines.” These trees provide lots of shade while you stroll around appreciating the Roman’s ancient workmanship. Today, it was pretty overcast for good pictures, but it surely made for some nice cool walking underneath those pines. Even better, there’s so much mint growing on the ground around the city that each scuff of our shoes would fill the air with that heady aroma. Very nice.

Day before yesterday when we tried to drive from the airport to Zagarolo where we’re staying, we ran smack dab into rush hour. Naturally, we spent over two hours stuck in traffic. Today, I convinced Concetta that we should stay around Ostia and drive back after the dinner hour. That turned out to be a great suggestion as we stumbled onto the "La Villetta" restaurant in the nearby village of Alicia that, at least to our eye, appeared to cater mostly to local Italians. During the course of our ninety-minute stay, we never saw another tourist enter. We had a great dinner of “antipasti di mare,” bread, spaghetti, pizza, salad, local wine, and, at least for me, a nice double dose of espresso for the drive home. The owner didn’t speak English very well so it was an opportunity for Concetta and I to use our growing vocabulary of Italian phrases. “Due bicchiere di vino, per favore,” I said, and he knew just what we wanted. The wine tasted quite young, we thought, but still very nice. Earlier in the evening we’d been treated to a sample of similar wine when we mistakenly stumbled into a wine wholesaler when we thought the shop was a restaurant. The proprietor handed us a cup and told us to sample any of the many stainless steel barrels on display that we wanted, at least I guessed that’s what he said. He didn’t speak a word of English, either.

So all in all, the day went pretty well. We might have gotten lost a lot, but serendipity has always been one of my favorite ways to discover life. On the way home, though we made a couple of wrong turns, we made it to the B&B in record time since rush hour had long since turned into the dinner hour. So there you have it. Another day in paradise. Ciao, Tutti.