Jun 3: Tomb Raiders; Open-mouthed at Ostia

I had the terrible misfortune of not properly setting my alarm last night, so I was woken up at the very end of breakfast, and had to scarf down some bread and cereal as everyone filed out of the room. Without time for even a shower (I was so gross from yesterday already!) I had to throw clothes on and join everyone at the entrance to the Centro. We got on a bus and headed for the Pyramid of Cestius, which is a large pyramid in the southwest part of the city built a few decades BC by some guy with a lot of money who was into the whole Egypt-fad (this was just after the Cleopatra scandal... clearly Egypt was all the rage). Unlike yesterday, we managed to board the bus in the right direction, and made it there by 8:40.

The road was built around the pyramid, so it is literally on a street corner.
(The base of the pyramid is about 20 ft below present-day ground level.)

Our appointment was for 9, but we didn't see anyone at the gate. Wondering if there was another way in, we circled the block and entered into the Protestant cemetery, where I had really wanted to visit anyway: it is the burial place of two of the six great Romantic Poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. We saw their graves, which were very quiet things set in a gorgeous, crowded graveyard.

This past semester I took a seminar on Shelley. He drowned off the coast of  Italy.

Keats's grave doesn't say his name. He died in Rome on his way to visit Shelley,
who had invited him to stay with him and Mary while Keats recovered from illness.

But an entrance to the level of the pyramid was not to be found here.

The base of the pyramid was inaccessible from the graveyard,
though we got a good sense of scale.

I managed to lose the group, and figured I would circle back to the gate on the other side of the block to see if they had regrouped there. They hadn't, but I met a man named Franco on the other side of the gate, who said he, too, was looking for a group of Americans - our group! He spotted them in the graveyard and had me call them over. While we waited for them to circle the block to us, I had my first successful Italian conversation with Franco, who is the custodian of the pyramid and the museum across the street (a medieval fortress that, hilariously, is literally in the middle of the road). The group arrived, and though I think Franco was annoyed at Prof. Donahue for not showing up on time (even though I tried to explain that we had been early), he liked me, so he stayed friendly. He led us down to the pyramid and through the door into its inner depths. Through a cramped passageway we entered into the burial chamber. It was a bare room with simple pictures on the walls and some graffiti. Any objects that once were housed here have long been removed. Another passageway leads out of the tomb and was bored by intruders in the middle ages. The one we came through was dug in the 1700s.

Sitting in what was probably once a niche where a statue of Cestius sat.

After exiting the pyramid, we left Franco and got onto the subway, which brought us several miles west of Rome to the ancient port city of Ostia. In its heyday between 200 BC and 300 AD, it had housed 50,000 people, and was a crucial trading point for the city of Rome. In later centuries it became a resort town for the rich, but in the end had simply been abandoned. It was covered until the 1800s, when minor excavations begun, which reached full force in the 20th century. The ruins are incredibly preserved, mostly made of brick, stone, and concrete.

The most astounding thing about Ostia, hands down, was how unbelievably huge it was. As we walked through the streets, we realized it just went on and on and on. Since it had been abandoned, nothing had ever been built over it, and the entire city had been preserved. We followed the general path of the main road through the city, which runs east to west (though we were going east), from the sea towards Rome along the ancient route of the Tiber. We explored baths, warehouses, shops and homes. I climbed through a perilous looking hole in the wall up to the second story of a house, then up a nearly disintegrated staircase to stand on the broken walls of the second story. This is where we got our first good glimpse of the city.

When we descended, we saw some more baths, with incredibly preserved murals, then walked over an open field area. We discovered tunnels beneath it, which we figured were used to heat the bathhouses. The tunnels were really scary - pitch black in many places, with bats flying about, frightened by our noise and camera flashes. It was an Indiana Jones moment.

Above ground again, we came to the ancient theater, which had been partially restored. Past that was another big field with the ruins of a temple to Vulcan in the middle. We picnicked here in the shade, posed on the steps of the old temple, and prowled the perimeter of the quad. Merchants' storefronts had surrounded the square, as evidenced by murals in the ground depicting the type of trade that took place at each stall. It was really cool to see, and gave us a sense of the type of business that went on here, as well as vivid images of a bustling port marketplace.

We saw an ancient bar/tavern, an apartment complex (where we got another great vista), then proceeded to the ancient capitol building. Three walls of this structure still stand, and they are quite high and formidable. In front of it is a decrepit colonnade and another little quad. Past this area we simply walked around, in and out of houses, up and down stairs, over fallen columns, through overgrown walkways, into dark cellars and, always, up any staircase we could find - in tact or otherwise. But heat got the better of us, and, low on water, we retreated to the visitor's center. Here we visited a small museum made up entirely of busts and marble statues. Then we walked back through ancient Ostia to the subway.

This time, the goddess of the bus system did not smile on us, as we got on one bus, barely made our stop, walked several blocks to another, only to get on the right bus going in the wrong direction. We stuck it out on this one until it hit its last stop and reversed direction. At least we got to circle around the Colosseum!

Finally, in the neighborhood of the Centro, we got some gelato (coconut! so delicious!), then mobbed the Centro's showers. After dinner (delicious as always), we headed out to a nearby park just to explore. (Well, I went to explore. According to the girls, they needed to walk off all the delicious carbs they'd just consumed.)

We wanted to go out to shop or do something touristy, like see the Trevi fountain, but decided we were just too tired tonight.

Tomorrow should be a light day - we only have stuff to do in the morning. Sunday is a day off. The weekend should be fun!