Latest / The Story of Italy: Rome, Renaissance, and the Birth of Modern Europe — Fexingo History / Ostia After the Empire: The Port That Outlived Rome
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Rome's grand monuments and its military might. But I keep coming back to a quieter question: what happened to the places that made all that possible once the empire fell? Not Rome itself, but the supporting cast. Luna: Like the port cities? Lucas: Exactly. And Ostia is the perfect case. We did an episode on it as a bustling port in the imperial heyday — the warehouses, the guilds, the ships unloading grain from Egypt and Africa. But what I find even more fascinating is what happened after. Because Ostia didn't just disappear overnight. It had a long afterlife, and that story is often overlooked. Lucas: By the fourth century, Ostia was already in decline. The emperor Constantine had moved the capital east, and the new port of Portus had taken over most of the heavy traffic. But Ostia was still a functioning town — a bishopric, actually, with its own cathedral. In 387, Saint Augustine was living in Rome and considered moving to Ostia to set up a community of scholars. He never did, but the place clearly still had some life. Luna: Wow, Augustine almost moved to Ostia? That's a different picture than a ghost town. Lucas: Right. And there's a wonderful detail from around 417: a man named Flavius Philippus set up an inscription in Ostia to restore an old statue of Minerva. So even in the fifth century, people were still caring for the old monuments, clinging to the past. But the political chaos of the Gothic Wars in the sixth century changed everything. The Byzantine general Belisarius captured Ostia in 537 to use as a base, and the city was sacked repeatedly. By the end of the century, the population had shrunk to a fraction of what it was, and the ancient aqueducts had collapsed. People were living among the ruins, using the old temples as shelters or quarries. Lucas: But here's the twist: Ostia never fully died. In the eighth century, the bishop of Ostia still held authority, and the city became part of the Papal States. The popes needed a defensive point at the mouth of the Tiber, so in the ninth century, Pope Gregory IV built a fortified town nearby, which was called Gregoriopolis. It was a classic medieval settlement — walls, a church, a few hundred souls — but it was a direct continuation of the ancient city, just smaller and more scared. Luna: So the port didn't vanish, it just hunkered down. Lucas: Exactly. And the people of medieval Ostia made a living from the salt pans that had been there since antiquity. Those pans were hugely valuable — salt was essential for preserving food, and the church controlled the trade. So you had this continuity of an economy, even as the grand marble buildings crumbled. Lucas: But the town itself kept shifting. By the fifteenth century, the ancient ruins were abandoned, and the settlement moved to the other side of the Tiber, where the bishop's castle was rebuilt. That's the Castello di Giulio II, the fortress you can still see today, built in 1483 under Pope Sixtus IV and finished under Julius II. It was designed to protect the river approach to Rome, not to revive Ostia's old glory. The ancient city was just a quarry by then — its stones were carted off for St. Peter's and other Renaissance projects. Luna: It's strange to think of the stones being recycled. But also kind of poetic. Lucas: It is. And here's something that ties it together: the Renaissance humanists were the ones who 'rediscovered' Ostia. In the late fifteenth century, they started wandering through the overgrown ruins, copying inscriptions, sketching the remains. One of them, a guy named Flavio Biondo, wrote about Ostia in his guide to ancient Rome, and suddenly the place became a symbol of the lost classical world. It wasn't a working port anymore, but it was a monument to memory. Lucas: And it kept that role. In the eighteenth century, the popes sponsored excavations to find statues and inscriptions for their collections. Napoleon's agents even took some pieces to the Louvre. But it wasn't until the early twentieth century, under Italian archaeologist Guido Calza, that Ostia was systematically excavated. That's when we got the wonderful picture we have today — the mosaic-filled Piazzale delle Corporazioni, the apartment blocks, the baths. All of it was hidden under centuries of silt and sheep pasture. Luna: It's a whole world buried and then brought back. Lucas: And I'm glad we're digging into this together. You know, a lot of what we do on this show is a bit like that — uncovering stories that have been sitting under the surface. And if you've been following along, you know we keep the whole thing ad-free. That's only possible because of a handful of listeners who toss a couple of dollars our way now and then. If you've gotten something out of these conversations, you could help keep them going at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, every bit genuinely counts. Lucas: So where were we? Oh right — the excavation. The thing is, digging up Ostia wasn't just about uncovering stones. It was about uncovering a different way of life. The apartment buildings, like the Casa di Diana, show that ordinary Romans lived in multi-story flats, not just villas. The thermopolium, the ancient fast-food joint, had a counter with jars for hot food — a kind of street food culture that would feel familiar to us. And there were neighborhoods, workshops, even a fire brigade. Ostia gives us a rare full picture of a Roman working town, not just the elite side. Lucas: What strikes me is the way time layers there. You can stand on the forum and see the capitolium, the temple to the Capitoline triad, from the second century. A few steps away is the Christian basilica of Santi Pietro e Paolo, built in the fifth century on an older pagan site. And just beyond, the medieval borgo with its castle. It's like a timeline you can walk through. Luna: I love that image — walking through time. Lucas: But there's also a sadder layer. In the 1930s, Mussolini's regime excavated parts of Ostia to connect it to the new town of Lido di Ostia, and they didn't always do careful archaeology. They removed the medieval village that had grown over the ancient ruins, destroying some evidence to create a sanitized view of Roman greatness. That's a reminder that every excavation is also a choice about what to preserve and what to erase. Luna: So even the 'rediscovery' wasn't neutral. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's a fitting note to end on. Ostia's story isn't just about a port that declined. It's about how a place can be transformed by power, memory, and even ideology. The physical city might have faded, but its echoes are everywhere — in the stones of St. Peter's, in the walls of the castle, in the careful reconstruction of a mosaic floor. It's a reminder that history isn't a straight line; it's a palimpsest, where each generation writes over the last, but the old words still peek through. Luna: That's a beautiful way to think about it. Thanks for taking us there, Lucas.