Ostia Antica
Parco Archeologico Di Ostia Antica, The Excavated Harbour City Of Rome, Abandoned Rather Than Destroyed And Covering Roughly 150 Hectares Of Which About Two Thirds Is Dug · Rome, Lazio
Rome's own port city sits half an hour from the centre on a suburban train, and it is the ruin to go to if what you actually want is to walk around a Roman town rather than a Roman monument. Ostia was not destroyed, it was abandoned when the harbour silted up, so what survives is ordinary: apartment blocks two and three storeys high with their staircases intact, bars with the marble counters still in place and the menu painted on the wall, a public lavatory with twenty seats in a row, warehouses, bakeries with the millstones standing, a theatre still used for performances, and a firemen's barracks. Mosaic floors are everywhere and walked on. The site is enormous, largely unfenced internally, shaded by umbrella pines, and on a weekday you can have whole streets to yourself, which is something the Forum has not offered in a century. It costs a fraction of what the Colosseum does, and the train out from the city takes half an hour on a normal urban fare.
Viale dei Romagnoli 717, Rome, Lazio, 00119, Italy
ALL TIMES UNVERIFIED FOR THIS ROW. Broadly: the archaeological park opens Tuesday to Sunday, closed Mondays, from mid-morning with a last admission an hour or more before closing, running late in summer and shutting in mid-afternoon in winter, and closed on 1 January and 25 December. The site museum keeps the same days and may close over the middle of the day. The state-museum free first Sunday applies. Individual buildings open and close on a rotating conservation schedule that is not published in advance. Confirm before travelling.