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Portus Romae was established in the middle of the first century AD and for well over 400 years was Rome's gateway to the Mediterranean... Lead author, Dr Tamsin O'Connell of the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge said, "The human remains from the excavations at Portus belong to a local population involved in heavy, manual labour, perhaps the saccarii (porters) who unloaded cargoes from incoming ships. When looking isotopically at the individuals dating to between the early second to mid fifth centuries AD, we see that they have a fairly similar diet to the rich and middle-class people buried at...

Ostia Antica is an archaeological site located on the outskirts of Rome. Although the Romans referred to the site as Ostia, this article will use the term Ostia Antica, so as to avoid confusion with the modern Roman municipio of Ostia (known officially as Lido di Ostia). Ostia Antica was the harbor city of ancient Rome and was therefore an important commercial center.

The researchers have been using an established technique known as magnetometry, which involves systematically and rapidly scanning the landscape with small handheld instruments in order to identify localised magnetic anomalies relating to buried ancient structures. These are then mapped out with specialised computer software, providing images similar to aerial photographs, which can be interpreted by archaeologists. In antiquity, the landscape in this recent study was known as the Isola Sacra and was surrounded by a major canal to the north, the river Tiber to the east and south, and the Tyrrhenian sea to the west. At the southernmost side of...

Visitors to the archeological remains of the ancient port town of Ostia, near Rome, purchase a map of the site. On the map key, the last two numbers, 67 and 68, correspond to a synagogue and a large private home. A shift in the Tiber left Ostia of little interest after the fourth century. Consequently, it is well-preserved. As we walk along the millennia-old stone-paved paths, it is easy to visualize the port with its sophisticated bath complexes, busy marketplaces, pagan temples, taverns, bakeries, schools and lavish homes. The talmudic report of Judah's praise for Roman ingenuity, "how becoming are...

Photo: Ostia Archeological Authority

Beneath Rome's Fiumicino airport lies a "mini-Colosseum" that may have played host to Roman emperors, according to British archaeologists. The foundations of the amphitheater, which are oval-shaped like the much larger arena in the heart of Rome, have been unearthed at the site of Portus, a 2nd century A.D. harbor near Ostia's port on the Tiber River. A monumental seaport that saved imperial Rome from starvation, Portus is now reduced to a large hexagonal pond on a marshy land owned by a noble family, the Duke Sforza Cesarinis. The two-square-mile site has been known since around the 16th century, but...

Scholars discovered the 100-yard-wide (90-metre-wide) canal at Portus, the ancient maritime port through which goods from all over the Empire were shipped to Rome for more than 400 years. The archaeologists... believe the canal connected Portus, on the coast at the mouth of the Tiber, with the nearby river port of Ostia, two miles away. It would have enabled cargo to be transferred from big ocean-going ships to smaller river vessels and taken up the River Tiber to the docks and warehouses of the imperial capital. Until now, it was thought that goods took a more circuitous overland route along...

Archeologists have discovereed an ancient Roman canal, theme of the Romans, connecting the town of Portus, on the mouth of the Tiber River, to the river town of Ostia. According to the Telegraph: "Scholars discovered the 100-yard-wide (90-metre-wide) canal at Portus, the ancient maritime port through which goods from all over the Empire were shipped to Rome for more than 400 years.