Ostia itself is a funny little town. Administratively it is part of Rome, and, with 90,000 residents, is the largest non-independent Commune in Italy. The townspeople are defiantly not Roman: if you ask a local whether they are Roman, the vehement denial will claim Ostia alone as home. In the picture are the lovely Stephan and Mauro of the chandlery in the Lido; Mauro is a great practical joker, and Stephan speaks wonderful English.
Ostia Antica, the port of ancient Rome about a mile up the Tiber, was abandoned by the fourth century AD, the river silt making it unusable, and unable to compete with larger ports up the coast. For hundreds of years not much happened around here, unless you're an Anapholes mosquito. Napoleon built the watchtower, shown in the main picture, at the first bend in the river, but that was about it.
The new Ostia was built in the late nineteenth century, largely on malarial swampland that was dug and reclaimed by fishermen brought in from Ravenna. A small part of the marshes is still left, kept as a nature reserve and home to seabirds and, we were told, otters. It's almost always deserted except for the volunteers who scythe paths through the reeds.
Ostia became an unsavoury hinterland to Rome, a place of violence and secrecy, with an appalling reputation. In the fifties, as part of the Italian film movement that worked to understand and define the post-war, Republican Italy, Ostia was a frequent film venue, used as a place to understand dislocation and distance while within easy distance of the centre of Rome. In 1975 the famous director and intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered in the marshes, and not long afterwards, a lot of money and effort was pumped into the place.
The porto turistico is the main result of this, with space for a lot of boats, a wildly expensive boat yard, and various shops. It is a major leisure site in the town, judging by the hundreds of people who take their passegata along the front. For festivals they mount small fairs and markets, but a lot more needs to be done to make Ostia distinct from the enormous competition it faces.
You can get most of the things you need in Ostia. The unremarkable crossroads in the gallery is key for cruisers: it is home to the covered market (one of two in the town), the nearest hardware store, several big supermarkets, and a chemist. The bus to the hypermarkets at Fiumicino stops along here too.
For us, Ostia is reminiscent of the backyard to London, those parts of the Thames Gateway creating an identity that doesn't only rely on commuting to the big, congested city half an hour up the tracks. But it needs more oomph, and more inclusiveness. And most of all, it seems, it needs ways to deliver well-paid work to residents so that the local economy really benefits.