Tour of Ancient Ostia from Rome | Ancient Ostia Exclusive Private or Group Guided Tours, including Tickets to discover the famous ruins of Ostia.
TOUR SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN
The Ancient Ostia Group Tour departs from Rome with your guide passing the old Ostiense Gate, the ancient city walls erected by Emperor Aurelian in 270 AD, and the vast marble Pyramid of Caio Cestius dating from 1st century BC. After 12 miles, reach Ostia Antica Excavations, situated at the mouth of the River Tiber on the Mediterranean coast, and visit the maritime port of ancient Rome.
Only rediscovered in the 19th century and excavated mainly from the 1920s to 1940s, Ostia was founded probably in the 7th century BC for salt extraction from marshy swamps. Still, later in the 4th century BC, it became a military and naval port protecting the Tiber access to Rome.
With Rome’s growing power, it became a thriving and vital commercial port that for centuries imported wheat, grain, foodstuffs, luxurious exotic goods, spices, multicolored marbles, Egyptian obelisks, and innumerable wild animals for the amphitheater games from Africa and Asia. The inhabitants were traders, shipbuilders, mariners, warehouse workmen, slaves, public officials, and wealthy patrician families, all busily engaged in intensive commerce and transportation over sea, river, and land. Many freedmen and slaves were of different origins, languages, and religions: Greeks, Phoenicians, Iberians, Gallic, Egyptians, and Frisians, and recently a Synagogue dating from the 1st century BC was unearthed.
The Ancient Ostia Group Tour continues visiting the superb typical Mediterranean setting of the excavations, covered with majestic umbrella pines and cypresses; it is as fascinating as Pompeii but without crowds and just 20 minutes out of Rome. Thirty-four hectares have been excavated from when it suddenly became a ghost town when an epochal flood changed the course of the Tiber.
With intriguing and entertaining explanations recounted by your erudite guide, you will experience how life was in this ancient seaport, discover various types of dwellings and tenement flats (insulae) of the middle and lower classes and visit residences of the wealthy during your stroll along the network of intact streets.
During the Ancient Ostia Group Tour, you can explore the interiors of temples, Roman baths, shops, mills, taverns, and public cloakrooms, all with vivid mosaic floors, frescoed walls, stuccoed decorations, and statues, rendering the traveler a whole idea of the rampant frenetic life of the port. Return to Rome by swift highway and end of the Ancient Ostia Group Tour.
