I’m in two minds about this postcard because although on one hand this is perhaps my favourite tourist destination of all time, it also feels like my own little undiscovered secret. Somewhere absolutely incredible and yet flying under the radar, still keeping its hipster credentials.
But I do write a blog so I really need to get over things like that.
Ostia Antica is the Pompeii no one’s heard of. Mostly, I guess, because its demise wasn’t anywhere near as dramatic. No erupting volcano, no clouds of ash, no thousands of dead bodies; people simply abandoned it with the fall of the Roman Empire.
Only a fifty minute train journey from Rome and €8 later and you can wander the rooms of Roman houses, climb up Roman staircases, walk on Roman mosaics. We even found ourselves underground at one point until I got creeped out and insisted we go back to daylight. I love places you can freely explore and really immerse yourself in the history, spending the day pretending to be Roman nobility, and nowhere has been better for that than Ostia Antica.
