Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica is the modern name for the ancient Roman city of Ostia, which became the port city of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber. It lies near modern Ostia, about 25 kilometres southwest of Rome, and because the river silted up the coastline the site now sits roughly 3 kilometres from the sea. The name comes from the Latin word os, meaning mouth. Tradition holds that the fourth king of Rome, Ancus Marcius, founded the colony, and an inscription supports a military camp there in the 7th century BC, although the oldest surviving remains date from the 4th century BC. Ostia grew as a naval base and grain port, was sacked by pirates in 68 BC and rebuilt, and reached perhaps 50,000 inhabitants in the 2nd century AD, with theatres, baths, taverns, eighteen Mithraea and the earliest synagogue yet identified in Europe. After abandonment, sand dunes covered the site and preserved it so well that only Pompeii and Herculaneum surpass it, and today it is a large archaeological site noted for its buildings, frescoes and mosaics.