Rome · mouth of the Tiber · Lazio
Ostia Antica.
The town that kept Rome fed.
Brick apartment blocks with balconies, bars with marble counters, warehouses for the grain of Egypt, baths with mosaics and eighteen mithraea: Ostia Antica is the most complete Roman town you can see without a volcano, half an hour from Rome and without the crowds of Pompeii. Here is everything for your day: the history from the fort by the salt pans to the excavation for Mussolini’s world fair, tickets and admission, how to get there by Metromare, and our own map of the excavations.
Ostia began in the 4th century BCE as a fort at the mouth of the Tiber, 25 kilometres from Rome. When the capital counted a million people, its grain came through Ostia and the artificial harbour of Portus; the town grew to perhaps 50,000 inhabitants, with brick apartment blocks of four storeys, warehouses, baths, a theatre and mithraea. From the 3rd century it lost out to Portus, in the Middle Ages to marsh, pirates and malaria. Popes dug for statues from 1801; Guido Calza uncovered half the town in four years from 1938 to 1942. Today about a third of the 150 hectares can be seen. Source: Parco archeologico
Four ways into the town
Understand, plan,
find your way
01AI vision150The window of OstiaFrom the forum in the grain year 150 through the evening when Augustine sits at the window with Monica, the pope’s excavation in the marsh and Calza’s race for the world fair to today: the time journey in front of the Capitolium.Start the journey 02Real photoc. 150The historyFrom the fort by the salt pans through the shipowners’ mosaics, the harbour of Claudius and Hadrian’s brick town to Augustine at the window, the marsh and the world fair that never took place.Read the history 03Checked 26 Sep 20262026Tickets & admission€18, €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25, free on the first Sunday, seasonal opening hours, closed Mondays, Metromare from Porta San Paolo in 30 minutes.Plan your visit 
04Own plan20 sitesThe mapPlan of the excavations with the decumanus, theatre, Piazzale delle Corporazioni, House of Diana, Thermopolium, Capitolium, Forum Baths, synagogue, museum, entrance and station.Open the map Ostia Antica in brief
Ostia Antica in brief
Where is Ostia Antica?
In the south-west of Rome at the old mouth of the Tiber, 25 kilometres from the centre and six kilometres from Fiumicino airport. The coast is now three kilometres away; in antiquity the town lay right on the river and close to the sea. Ostia Antica station on the Metromare is five minutes’ walk from the entrance.
When was Ostia at its height?
In the 2nd century CE, under Hadrian and his successors: the town was then rebuilt in brick, with the Capitolium, the apartment blocks, the great warehouses and baths. Almost everything you see today dates from the decades between 100 and 200.
What can you see today?
About fifty hectares of excavated town: the decumanus from the Porta Romana towards the sea, the theatre and the Piazzale delle Corporazioni with the shipowners’ mosaics, the House of Diana and the Thermopolium, the forum with the Capitolium, the Forum Baths with their latrine, the House of Cupid and Psyche, the synagogue, mithraea and the Museo Ostiense.
How long do you need?
A whole day if you walk to the Porta Marina and the synagogue; three to four hours for the highlights between the Porta Romana and the forum. Ostia is far less crowded than Pompeii but just as big; from the entrance to the seaward end is two kilometres.
Looking beyond the Tiber
At the same
time, elsewhere.
When Hadrian built the Capitolium of Ostia around 120, Pompeii had been buried for forty years, Teotihuacan was completing the Pyramid of the Sun, and the Library of Celsus was rising at Ephesus. Drag the marker and discover the other sites.
- 100 BC – 79 AD A city still inhabited
- 600 BC – 90 BC Before Rome
- 89 BC – 61 AD Roman municipium
- 62 AD – 78 AD After the earthquake
- 79 AD – 79 AD The destruction
- 500 BC – 200 BC The Forum of the Republic
- 199 BC – 1 BC Villas on the Palatine
- 1 AD – 79 AD Nero’s lake in the valley
- 80 AD – 437 AD The amphitheatre in use
- 438 AD – 599 AD Last games
- 600 AD – 1348 AD Fortress, workshop, quarry
- 1349 AD – 1500 AD After the earthquake of 1349
- 350 BC – 31 BC Castrum and Republic
- 30 BC – 99 AD Augustus to Domitian
- 100 AD – 235 AD Height under Hadrian
- 236 AD – 400 AD Late antiquity
- 600 BC – 481 BC Before the Parthenon
- 480 BC – 448 BC After the Persian destruction
- 447 BC – 433 BC A monument takes shape
- 432 BC – 399 AD The Classical ensemble
- 400 AD – 1000 AD New uses, the same rock
- 300 BC – 1 BC A Hellenistic framework
- 1 AD – 149 AD Roman living spaces
- 150 AD – 269 AD The age of the library
- 270 AD – 800 AD A building changes its role
- 1 AD – 149 AD The city grows
- 150 AD – 249 AD An axis for the city
- 250 AD – 599 AD Life between the monuments
- 600 AD – 700 AD A centre in transition
- 600 BC – 199 AD Before the great temples
- 200 AD – 694 AD A Classic Maya city
- 695 AD – 733 AD After the victory over Calakmul
- 734 AD – 799 AD Monument and memory
- 800 AD – 950 AD An urban world in transition
- 600 BC – 31 BC Travellers of antiquity
- 30 BC – 640 AD Roman province
- 641 AD – 1400 AD Quarry for Cairo
- 600 AD – 849 AD Old Chichén
- 850 AD – 899 AD Between two cities
- 900 AD – 1049 AD The florescence of the new city
- 1050 AD – 1199 AD After the fall
- 1200 AD – 1250 AD The age of Mayapán
- 1400 AD – 1419 AD Before the estate
- 1420 AD – 1532 AD Pachacuti’s estate
- 1533 AD – 1572 AD After the conquest
- 800 AD – 1112 AD Before Angkor Wat
- 1113 AD – 1150 AD A temple takes shape
- 1151 AD – 1180 AD After the builder
- 1181 AD – 1295 AD The age of Jayavarman VII and after
- 1296 AD – 1350 AD Zhou Daguan’s Angkor
- 1351 AD – 1430 AD Droughts and monsoons
- 1431 AD – 1500 AD The capital moves on
The bands show editorial windows from our stories, not complete settlement histories. Window boundaries organise the narrative; not every change can be dated to a single year. Photographs show the surviving condition, not the selected year. Present-day coastlines provide orientation.
From your screen to the decumanus
Experience Ostia Antica yourself
The park is open Tuesday to Sunday from 8.30 am, until 7 pm in summer; the ticket costs €18, online from CoopCulture or at the booth on Viale dei Romagnoli. Tours from Rome bundle train, ticket and guide; if you come on your own, take the Metromare from Porta San Paolo, and after the footbridge the town lies before you.
Affiliate link: we may receive a commission when you book through GetYourGuide. The historical interpretation remains independent.
Sources and context
This overview relies on the Parco archeologico di Ostia antica, its ticketing partner CoopCulture, the topographical dictionary ostia-antica.org and the citation of the European Heritage Label; each subpage cites its sources alongside the content.
- Parco archeologico di Ostia antica: visitor information (opening hours, tickets, getting there)
- Parco archeologico di Ostia antica: home page
- CoopCulture: ticket for the archaeological area (€18, seasonal hours)
- Ostia-antica.org: topographical dictionary of the town (Jan Theo Bakker)
- European Commission: European Heritage Label 2019
Images and usage rights
The Capitolium from the forum: photo Nicholas Hartmann, 2019, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Map: own plan based on OpenStreetMap data (ODbL).
Angkor Wat from the west across the lotus pond, photographed on 10 December 2019. Balon Greyjoy / Wikimedia Commons · CC0 1.0. Resized to 1600 pixels wide and converted to WebP; no cropping or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
The Kukulcán pyramid (El Castillo) at Chichén Itzá, north side with the restored stairway, seen from the Great Platform. Photograph taken on 31 May 2013. Arian Zwegers / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0. Resized to 1600 pixels wide and compressed as WebP; no crop or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
.jpg){kind=link}
The pyramids of Giza from the desert to the south: the pyramid of Menkaure with its three queens’ pyramids in front, Khafre with the remaining casing at its top behind, the Great Pyramid of Khufu on the right. Photograph taken on 19 June 2006. Ricardo Liberato / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped to 3:2 (a few pixels at the edges), resized to 1600 pixels wide and compressed as WebP; no content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
The excavations of Herculaneum seen from the access ramp: the boat houses on the ancient beach below, above them the terrace of Marcus Nonius Balbus, the town and Vesuvius; modern Ercolano on top. Photograph taken on 27 March 2023. Diego Delso / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized to 1600 pixels wide and compressed as WebP; no crop or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
View from the upper tier into the Colosseum: the exposed hypogeum, the partly reconstructed arena floor and the tiers opposite. Photograph taken on 15 September 2022. Diego Delso / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized to 1600 pixels wide and compressed as WebP; no crop or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
Machu Picchu from the upper terraces near the Guardian’s Hut: the main plaza with its single tree, the temple sector on the left, the residential quarters on the right, Huayna Picchu behind. Photograph taken on 27 June 2009 in evening light. Martin St-Amant (S23678) / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped to 3:2 (sky trimmed at the top), resized to 1600 pixels wide and compressed as WebP; no content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
View from the Pnyx towards the Acropolis of Athens and the Parthenon, photographed on 20 May 2020. George E. Koronaios / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized to 1600 pixels wide and converted to WebP; no cropping or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
The façade of the Library of Celsus in Ephesus, Turkey, photographed on 8 April 2015. Carole Raddato / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0. Resized to 1600 pixels wide and converted to WebP; no cropping or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
.jpg){kind=link}
Temple I at the Great Plaza of Tikal, Guatemala. Photograph taken on 26 June 2015. Kaldari / Wikimedia Commons · CC0 1.0. Resized to a maximum edge of 1600 pixels and compressed as WebP; no crop or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
View across the Avenue of the Dead at Teotihuacan: the Pyramid of the Sun stands to the right, with the Pyramid of the Moon at the far end of the axis. Photograph taken on 27 December 2017. Ralibreros112 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized to a maximum edge of 1600 pixels and compressed as WebP; no crop or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
The Great Plaza of Tikal with Temple I, seen from Temple II; the North Acropolis stairway on the left, the Central Acropolis on the right. Photograph taken on 21 July 2010. Mario Bollini / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0. Resized to 1600 pixels wide and compressed as WebP; no crop or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
The Capitolium of Ostia Antica seen from the forum: the flight of steps, the brick core of the Hadrianic temple, on the left a column of the basilica, on the right the remains of the forum porticoes. Photograph taken on 7 September 2019. Nicholas Hartmann / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized to 1600 pixels wide and compressed as WebP; no crop or content alterations. Framing varies by screen. Derived photograph under the same licence.
Natural Earth / world-atlas · Licences