There are ghost towns in Rome. Houses lurk below the modern streets, entombed by centuries of medieval and Renaissance and Victorian and modern-day homes built above them. Outside of Rome, the ancient port city of Ostia Antica lies far from the sea that once splashed against its shores. Millennia of silt deposited by the mouths of rivers created land where there once was sea. Now the town is marooned in time and space, a port in dry dock, a metropolis of empty streets. Mosaics of fish and dolphins, of ships in full sail and beckoning lighthouses, decorate a silent piazza in this abandoned port now far from the sea.
It’s no surprise that other ages lay beside and below 21st century Rome. It doesn’t hide its age; no architectural tummy tucks or engineering face lifts for Rome. Its wrinkles have come from the sun of Caesar. The Coliseum, the Forum, Trajan’s Column are its age spots marking the passage of time on the skin of the city.
Below the modern streets on which buses rumble, and tourists move in glassy-eyed herds, lie older avenues. Underneath the five and six story buildings with their imposing weight, their windows covered by the Foster Grants of wooden shutters, lay the silent walls of houses that once stood, frescoed and proud, in the teeming hub of the capitol.
The home of a wealthy 2nd century Roman, perhaps a senator, has been uncovered below an elegant palazzo built by a rich Renaissance merchant. Archeologists and historians burrowed below the fancy building, like time-traveling gophers, and uncovered the remains of an ancient villa. They then teamed up with lighting experts to create an eerie reconstruction of what the villa once looked like. Called the Domus Romane Di Palazzo Valentini, it just opened for small, public tours in October. It’s so new that it hasn’t yet made it into the tour books, so you can experience it in the company of a handful of fellow travelers, not multitudes.
To enter the villa, you walk down a flight of clear plastic stairs built above the ancient steps. It’s dark, and the clear steps seem to float above the time-dulled brick ones, throwing off your depth perception so that with each step, you feel like you’re falling – falling onto the ancient steps, into the exhumed villa, back into time. A recorded voice (in whatever language the group chooses) points out what you are seeing along the way. It’s dark, three stories below the current street level. Lights focus on what’s being described: a patch of frescoed wall, a segment of floor mosaics. You look and try to imagine: yes, you can almost see it – the wall would have been there, the mosaics might have been loops or swirls, but it’s hard to paint the picture in your mind. Then gradually, the lighting changes. The fresco fragment grows, the missing parts supplied by the lighting technician, and suddenly you see panels of vermillion interspersed with rectangles of gold, with leaves and flowers painted in a border. The elegantly painted room comes alive. The lighting changes again, and the mosaic fragment on the floor expands, the missing patterns filled in, and all of a sudden the floor glistens in a beautiful pattern of interlocking, colorful circles. Then the square hollows in the floor are tiled with light and filled with electronic beams of water, and there they are: the baths in which the family immersed themselves. A tape plays of children’s laughter amid the sound of splashing water. The ancient rooms live again. The light becomes brighter, and now a curving staircase is revealed in the shadows, the steps wide and even, leading up . . . straight into a wall: the foundation of the Renaissance mansion above, which rests on these rooms below. The mosaics circle across the floor, only to be cut in half by the foundation of the building above. Half of the ornate mosaic pattern is stranded on one side of the foundation wall, the other half on the opposite side, twain in two like Berlin halved by the Wall.
I am sure that ghosts prowl that subterranean villa, just as I am sure they roam the streets of Ostia Antica, the ancient port of Rome, located about a half-hour outside of Rome by train. Ostia was once a teeming city of 20,000 in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. It served merchant vessels hauling goods destined for the million-plus residents of Rome. The mighty Tiber River joined the sea at Ostia. Vessels from around the Mediterranean called there, unloading their cargo to be transferred onto boats and shipped up the river to Rome. The Emperor Hadrian helped maintain and expand Ostia, the same emperor who directed the construction of the wall across England marking the northern-most extreme of Rome’s territory, the same emperor who designed the reconstruction of the Pantheon around 140 AD. The talented and multi-faceted Hadrian directed the construction of apartment buildings and baths at Ostia; the sea merchants came; the town boomed.
An amphitheater was constructed in the middle of the city, capable of seating 4,000 people. A special area was built between the stage and the seats that could be filled with water, so a pool would reflect the actions of the actors up on the stage. Behind the stage was an elegant public square with a temple in the middle. The four sides of the square were wide sidewalks, and edging the sidewalks were stalls for vendors. The stalls were separated by low stone walls, and in front of each stall were inlaid mosaics advertising the merchant’s wares. You can walk along the sidewalk and see them still: leaping fish for a fish monger; beside it etched in white mosaics on a black background are two ships, rigging taut, sails unfurled, being guided into harbor by a flashing lighthouse. Perhaps this merchant sold rope for rigging or canvas for sails: we do not know. Beside the silent ships, frozen forever in mid-sail, is an elephant, perfectly proportioned, drawn in white mosaic stones. This trader hailed from Africa, and used the elephant as his country’s calling card. Turn the corner onto the next sidewalk and there are barrels portrayed for a barrel-maker, and further an olive branch is outlined for the seller of fine olive oil. You can almost hear the merchant’s calls, almost see the haggling exchanges, the hands waving to acquaintances, the kiss on the cheek for friends.
But the mosaics advertise stalls that are long gone. Surrounding the square are the walls and roofless buildings of the ruins. Over time, the Tiber River brought its own goods to Ostia: silt, dirt, gravel and pebbles washed off the lands that empty into it. The mouth of the river spat out the dirt it carried, depositing a plume of silt that grew and grew, pushing the sea further away. There are maps showing the shoreline growing around Ostia, passing it, engulfing it in a sea of land where once was an ocean of water. Ostia was stranded, left behind by the receding sea.
But the Roman road through the city still remains: big gray slabs of stone paving the ancient streets. And much of the buildings remain, too, with fragments of frescoes still decorating walls. You walk down the town’s main street and here is a road-side bar with a counter that’s still comfortable to lean against, and behind it a panel frescoed with images of the food and drink you could buy there. A pleasant courtyard is just outside with a fountain, and stone benches built into the walls. Here you’d pick up a snack and a cool drink, take it out to the patio for al fresco dining.
Further down the street are the remains of apartment buildings and baths. You walk through the buildings and down side streets and you are alone. The school groups are clustered elsewhere. Throughout the town and especially at its edges, you can be in peace and silence with the buildings, with the city. Red poppies are blossoming, bushes grow amidst the cracks. Exploring the remains of a villa, I idly push aside pebbles and dirt with the toe of my shoe and revealed beneath is a mosaic. Bending down, I scratch away the dirt and there is a corner of a whirling shape, still beautiful, still in place, nearly two thousand years after the artist carefully fit the mosaic stones together to decorate the floor of what was once a beautiful room. I rest my hand on the mosaic and imagine the feet that walked here: the wobbly bare-footed steps of babies, the quick sandaled step of a businessman. The walkers are gone but the floor remains, a carpet of dirt and flowers and pebbles resting on top of it.
At the edge of the city is another complex of baths. No one is around. There’s an odd flight of steps leading below-ground and we follow it. Down we go, emerging into an underground vault. The air is cool and damp. The vault becomes a tunnel, high enough to stand up straight but not much more. Blocked from the bright sunlight above, the tunnel is shadowy. There are stone benches running along both sides, and patches of slick green moss, feeding off the subterranean damp, appear on the vaulted ceiling. No one is around, there are no voices, no chattering groups. It is utterly still.
We look down the length of the tunnel. Standing at the end, blazingly white, is a life-size statue of the god Mithras straddling a young bull, pulling back its head and reaching down to cut the young animal’s throat. Both the muscular young god and the bull are carved from white marble. An opening is cut into the roof above the god’s head so that a square patch of sun shines down upon him, lighting him so that he gleams in the dark gloom of the tunnel. He is sacrificing the bull so that its regenerative blood will flow. His calf muscles are flexed, his powerful forearms are sinewy and strong, the bull’s eyes roll in fear, and Mithras glances upward, toward heaven, as his arm descends with the knife.
This is a bath-cum-temple dedicated to Mithras, who once had quite a following. His chief rival, in fact, for fame and renown, was Jesus. The two shared similar stories and similar qualities. Here in Ostia, the cult of Mithras ruled. And in this cavern carved into the earth his followers would sit on these stone benches, the image of their god as big as life enshrined before them.
Now the tunnel is empty, except for us. Mithras continues to glisten, powerful and imposing, enthroned here century after century, his followers long gone, his power disappeared. The bull is frozen in the moment before death; Mithras is frozen in the act of sacrifice. All is silent except for the voices of those long gone.
We quietly make our way out of the vault and climb back to the surface, to the poppies and grasses, to the quiet abandoned streets, the roofless, time-worn buildings.
There are ghosts in Rome.
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