 Every time you land in Rome, look out the window. You might catch a glimpse of the port city, Ostia Antica, there it is, along the Tiber River that feeds into the Mediterranean. We're going to go down today and explore this imperial brick city, the port city of Imperial Rome. Hey everyone, we are in the heart of Ostia Antica. We are in the Forum area, and this is the Hadrianic Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Panning to the space of the Forum Piazza. And on the opposite side, it's the temple of Augustus and Roma, which is Tiberian in date. And on this side, we have the Forum Baths, and we're now walking up to the Basilica. So this is a walk through Ostia Antica with Ancient Rome Live. And we are your guides to Ancient Rome and Empire. Today, we're taking a brief look at some of the phenomenal spaces of Ostia Antica, which is the port city of Rome. And it gets magnificently built up, particularly in the first and second centuries AD. Beyond the Basilica, we're walking now into this area known as the Augustium, because beyond this large piazza, you have stairs leading up to a round temple, a temple which is considered to be a pantheon-like structure, where a lot of statuary was found, of members of the imperial family, members that get deified. So this was once a domed structure, literally a miniature pantheon. Keep in mind in Rome, the pantheon was also all about the deification of the emperor and what took place in this magnificent piazza. We think, according to most recent studies, that it was a place where slaves were once auctioned off. So we want to think about these spaces, not just as places of worship, but also spaces where business activity was thriving in the imperial period. We're also going to get a sense of some neighborhoods as we make our way through the city. And because it was so crowded, just like Rome, people are living in apartment buildings, rather than in domed structures, like you see in Pompeii. So heading away from the Forum, we're heading at this point toward the coastline. And we're going to jump into a particular neighborhood where we can get a sense of those apartments. So we have our main streets here. We're on the Deco Manis, which runs east-west. You can see here we have many options, many directions to go. This street would take us to the Porta Marina Gate. We're going to deviate onto Via della Faulce. And Via della Faulce is this path that's cutting through directly to the mouth of the Tiber River. So it's one of those early arteries of importance in Ostiantica. And as we walk along here, we see countless shop fronts. So business was brisk in antiquity, looking down at the Republican layers of the Sanctuary of Hercules, which is currently under restoration. We're going to make our way to a structure that's preserved to some elevation, and that's going to be our Casa Giada di Serapide, where it refers to a shrine honoring the Egyptian god created by the Ptolemies, known as Serapis. But as we go along here, do you understand that Ostia, like Rome, is built in layers, so we're looking down at the Republican levels of this Sanctuary. There's the back end of that Temple of Hercules, and then here's the Imperial levels that we're walking on right now. There are plenty of great reconstructions. We can see where we are right now in Ostia. We can see the original route of the Tiber River, which has been diverted after a flood in the 16th century. This is where we have the Tiber River today. And this is an idea of what the city looked like in this neighborhood. And we're going to make our way into one area that was a domestic space, and it's particular because it's going to have its own bath complex. Across the way is the so-called Baz of Mithras, which has an underground Mithraeum. On this side here, we see Reconstructed a semi-elevation here. It's impressive, but a lot of this is reconstituted and built up as the big chunks of vaulting and walls were actually found. As you can see here from this photo. And we're entering into the Casa Jata di Serapide and it's an apartment building. In this particular area there are the stairs where we can't go up. We can't admire the spaces from down below. We can admire the Stucco Shrine of Serapis recently restored. And we can even admire this frescoed figure of Fortuna Tike Iside Isis right there. And here is our altar in front of this shrine. This just I hope underlines so much the importance of coming to Ostia. Also you get a sense it's a tranquil place. It's a place that you can explore. We have here in this courtyard a fountain where you can draw water from. We're going to make our way into the contiguous baths known as the baths called the Seven Wisemen named after some frescoes which are not accessible to the general public. But they're fun depictions of philosophers from the Greek world with their sayings in Greek and then Latin quips that are quite vulgar which make it a lot of fun. And what we have here is this bath complex which we're now walking through beautiful beautiful once domed space with these gorgeous black and white mosaics of wild animals. You can see how the dome has collapsed. We have here plunged pools that are not heated. And we have in this case a number of the vaulting areas preserved. Here is Venus and see creatures that you could have had for lunch decorating your cold plunged pool. So we're really in the heart of this bath complex which is quite extraordinary and a lot of second century frescoes preserved. So the bath complex that's heated, that section is over here or behind not accessible to the public. A little overgrown but we also understand that slaves are stoking a fire so we can come down below where the slaves once worked with a sense of those underground chambers and of course if you stoke a fire here the heat passes through these voids and you have a nice heated pool experience in the Caledarium. Some of the ways in which a trip to Ostiantica can be very rewarding and can ultimately bring you close to the lives of those people in the second century AD.