Some ancient Romans lived like king...then there were the other guys....

Our last day in Rome had arrived, but there was still too much to see. Somehow we had never actually found the museum at Villa Borghese--it was somewhere in the park up there, full of great art, but it had eluded us the day before. And we had missed the Nazionale and it's famous coin collections. And the Catacombs. But we opted instead to make the trip out to Ostia Antica--an ancient (even by Roman standards, 250 BCE) port town that served the imperial city.

Ostia (for "mouth") was situated where the Tiber met the Mediterranean Sea, and in its heyday was home to 60,000 plus guards, merchants, slaves, sailors, and their families. The Decumano Massimo, its basalt-paved main street, continues for nearly 2 kilometers. As you walk across the large, flat black stones, red brick foundations cluster one after another. They are the apartments, baths, bars, warehouses, shops, bakeries and temples where over 2,000 years ago Ostians lived lives surprisingly similar to ours today.

There is a large amphitheater that once seated 2,500 people and an extraordinary bathhouse, Terme dei Sette Sapienti (Bath of the Seven Sages), with classically-themed, mosaic floors and several colorful frescoes. Among the ruins this building is unique for its preserved walls and roof, and wandering through its rooms and halls you could imagine what ancient life might have been like for the average Roman, better than you could among the more majestic remains of the Coliseum or Forum. The on-site museum displayed sculptural portraits of some of the people who lived there culled from the ruins for protection: a husband and wife, a servant, some young men. Tomorrow we leave these ancient Romans behind, but they will be with us in our imaginations for a long time.