ostia antica and cerveteri

today we went and visited ostia antica and cerveteri. ostia antica is an ancient roman city that's outside of rome. ostia was italian for mouth because it was on the tiber river. it used to be one of the largest and most important port cities in italy, but with the changing of the land and water, the tiber river ended up moving away and the city was no longer valuable as a port city. it was deserted soon after that and now the ruins still remain. it was pretty interesting. i really like to see remains of cities like this. hearing about the romans fascinate me. they were so ahead of their time in engineering, human hygiene, city systems, and just everything. i love to learn about them.

the first thing we saw when we got there was the necropolis. necropolis means "city of the dead." they used to bury people in tombs outside of the city walls. quite the welcoming, huh?

the necropolis

those arches are for urns

burial sites

necropolis

fancy door

walls in the necropolis

the bricks are incredible

how did they make the bricks so straight?

and how did they lay them so straight?

some statue in the necropolis

once inside the city walls we actually got to see what the normal day of a roman back then would be like. there are many things going on here. there's storage for grains, thermal baths, a theatre, a city center, homes, and bars.

the city walls

where they kept the grains

probably one of the most interesting things to me was the thermal baths. the romans were very aware of their bodies and appearances (they had gyms), so they bathed frequently, which wasn't normal for this time period. there were certain times for women and men to bathe, which actually was a sign that women had a little bit of recognition in society, which was obviously a big deal that the romans respected the women because other cultures didn't. but the slaves would heat cauldrons underneath the mosaic floors of the baths to heat the water. first, you got in to the really hot water, then moved to the warm water, and finished in the cold water.

some thermal baths

thermal baths

bottom of a thermal bath

mosaic floors

lots of rooms

you can see the egg and dart moulding

(learned that in history of the decorative arts)

view from the bottom of the theatre

p.rez hanging out at the theatre

view from sitting in the theatre

the theatre

i love the bark on these italian trees

this is the place where all of the political gatherings took place

mosaic floors that surround the area of the city where political matters took place

this was the information board

i just thought it was cool

you can barely see the shewolf feeding romulus and remis in the lower left hand corner. you can kind of see the outline of the wolf

the main square

they used to bury jars in the ground and then put food in them because they were cool

it was like their fridges

mosaic floor

cinzia serving tommy in what was a bar

this is what we think was a bar

the courtyard of the bar

the main square of ostia antica

mosaics at the bottom of the thermal baths

you can see the drain in this one

after ostia antica we went over to cerveteri. cerveteri is an ancient etruscan city that was close to ostia antica. etruscans were the first settlers of italy. they were believed to be from asia minor. they were around before the roman times and this city was been there for over 2,000 years. a lot of it is missing because of natural causes or people taking things from it. there is not too much known about this civilization anymore, except what has been found. the christians a very long time ago actually believed that the etruscan language was pagan, so they burned many of their letters so we are not sure what language they spoke. but most of the information gathered about the etruscans was taken from this city.

the tombs were weird dome like things

reminds me of x-files

where the bodies were placed

inside the tomb

entrance to a tomb

door to a tomb. there were many of these in a row

the walkway. there are tombs on either sides. some go in to the ground and some are the domes

i'm not sure what this was but the greenery is pretty

this was the most expensive looking tomb that they found

they've got pillows made out of stone and decorations

they have this preserved behind glass so you can't go inside

top of an underground tomb

stairs leading to an underground tomb we went in

these were cases for the urns

these were ones left outside of the tombs as symbols for the families

tomb

a lot of tombs have little symbols outside representing the families that are inside. maybe referring to what they did for a living

what the tombs looked like when they found them

almost completely buried

thursday we're going to pompeii and herculaneum. i can't tell you how excited i am. we watched a movie about it yesterday. i will take tons of pictures!