Day 5: A Strange Breakfast, Ostia Antica, and a Power Plant Turned Museum

We began Saturday morning with a rather odd breakfast at the bed and breakfast. It consisted of a slice of cold pizza, a pastry, a ham sandwich, and a cheese and meat tray. Massimo wasn't there (we learned later his daughter was at some sort of summer camp and he went to see her play soccer this weekend) but another employee served us. It was a very carb-heavy breakfast - no fruit, no yogurt, no juice. We hoped this was an aberration, but sadly, it turned out to be the same breakfast every day. It really soured us (especially Lisa) on the place.

Street in Ostia.

My original plan for Saturday had been to get out of Rome by taking a bus to Palestrina, a hill town about 25 miles east of central Rome which houses a huge first-century BC Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia built on a series of terraces going up the hill. While at the Centro, I had taken a field trip and thought it was a very cool site and I wanted to go back to see 1) if it was worth taking students to and 2) if so, how easy it was to get there using public transportation. However, Lisa and I learned that the museum pass no longer covers these outlying sites (and the cost of transportation to get there), making it seem rather expensive. I figured that if we had to pay about 30 euros a piece to get there and back, it wasn't worth asking students to pay that much when I wasn't completely convinced it was a hugely important site. So I changed our plans. Instead of heading east to the hills, we would head southwest towards the ocean and visit Ostia, the port of ancient Rome near the mouth of the Tiber River which was largely constructed in the first and second centuries AD and now is a sizable abandoned site with lots of reasonably well-preserved buildings.

Cupid and Psyche.

To get there, we walked to the closest Metro station and as we did, I noticed Lisa and I were walking against the flow of pedestrians. I couldn't figure out why until I realized that the Metro stop we were headed to is also one of the closest stops to the Vatican, meaning we were fighting against all the tourists headed there for their Saturday morning! After taking the Metro a few stops, we switched to a small regional train (which is really just a glorified above-ground Metro line) that runs out to the beach and stops about a quarter-mile from the entrance to the Ostia site. The city was founded in the fourth century BC and its growth really followed the growth of Rome. The Bay of Naples, far to the south, offered the Romans a beautiful natural harbor and much of the goods coming in and out of Rome passed through Naples, but in the late Republic (first century BC) and the early Empire (first and second centuries AD), the Romans built and dredged man-made harbors at Ostia in order to reduce the distance goods (especially food) had to travel to get to the city. The more people lived in Rome, then, the bigger Ostia became as the landing point for Rome's food supply. As the population of Rome declined at the end of the empire, there was less need for a major port and the site was gradually abandoned until by the sixth century AD, it was just a ruined city with no inhabitants, the marshes and malarial mosquitoes slowly taking over. Fortunately, the marshes have now been drained, malaria was wiped out in Italy in the 1970s, and Ostia is now a fascinating place to see how everyday life would have functioned for the Romans.

Public restrooms, ancient Roman style.

Lisa and I started by walking into the center of the site to the museum, which houses a number of statues and funerary monuments from Ostia. Because Ostia was a port, it attracted merchants and sailors from throughout the Mediterranean and so there are a number of temples and statues of gods from Egypt and Asia in Ostia, like Attis and Isis. There's also a nice statue of Cupid and Psyche, one of Lisa's favorite sculptural themes. After the museum, we had lunch at the cafe next door (it was so-so) and then started exploring the site.

Mosaic from the Piazzale degli Corporazioni.
This guy apparently sold grain.

Ostia was a town of a couple thousand people and so the site is big enough that you could spend a whole day wandering around it - and I did, while at the Centro! There were other things we wanted to do in Rome that day, though, so we limited our visit to just a few of the main sight, like the Forum, a set of public baths, the public bathrooms just off the Forum, a dining hall for an ancient businessman's association, and the reconstructed theater. There's also a cool place called the Piazzale degli Corporazioni (Plaza of the Corporations). This was a large square surrounded by colonnaded offices. In front of each office is a mosaic depicting what that merchant shipped or sold - grain, fish, timber, etc. Ancient branding in action!

Theater at Ostia.

Ancient sculpture, modern machinery.

Although the day had started off sunny, the wind had picked up, the clouds had rolled in, and it had started to sprinkle so it was a good thing we were wrapping up our visit. We took the train back to Rome and walked through the wind and sprinkles about a half-mile from the station to the Montemartini Museum, my favorite museum in Rome. The building is the original electrical power plant for the city, built in the 1900s. It was decommissioned in the 1950s and in the late 1990s, while the Capitoline Museum was undergoing restoration work, they temporarily moved a lot of their collection of ancient sculptures to display in the old power plant. It was such a success that they decided to turn it into a permanent museum after that. So today you can walk along the huge early 20th century diesel turbines while admiring first century BC sculpture. It's a very cool juxtaposition, I think.

Fortuna Huiusce Die.

There are lots of interesting statues in the museum, but there are two that stand out for us. Lisa's favorite was the fragments of the colossal statue of Fortuna Huiusce Die ("Fortune of This Very Day") from a temple dedicated to her in the Largo Argentina (the place where all those cats live, if you remember our previous entries). It dates back to the second century BC and, as you can see from the pictures, it really is huge! My favorite ancient statue of all time is in this museum. It's a state of a Muse that stood in one of the public gardens during the early Empire. I love that she's wrapped up in her cloak with this beautifully dreamy but content expression on her face. I think it's amazing.

Michelangelo's Creation of Adam?
Nope, just Aaron and a statue.

Aaron and his favorite statue.

By the time we left the museum, the sun had come out again, but it was still rather chilly. We a took a direct bus back to our hotel, did some more window shopping along the Via Cola di Rienzo then went to dinner at the same restaurant we had eaten at the night before - it was just that good! When we walked in, it was clear it was a Saturday night as the place was packed. The waiter said he no table for us, but if we came back in about twenty minutes at 8:10, he'd have something. We walked back across the street to our hotel, then back to the restaurant at 8:10 and, sure enough, there was an empty table waiting for us. As the night before, the food was delicious and the place was mostly Italians. It was loud, boisterous, and everyone was having a great time. (As Lisa noted, this is in contrast to many of the restaurants we went to in France, where everyone was always quiet and subdued.) We also saw the waiter turn away other people who were looking for a table; we're convinced that the only reason he told us to come back later was because he recognized us from the night before. I guess it helps to be regulars, even for just two nights!

Bath art in Ostia - naked Aphrodite!

Coming up next: A gigantic flea market, a random encounter with a former student, a leisurely Sunday in the Campus Martius, and the beginning of the "church extravaganza."