Ostia Antica: The Pompeii Nobody Queues For

30 minutes by metro and train. A complete ancient Roman city better preserved than most of the Forum, with streets, apartments, baths, theaters, and mosaics intact. Rome's main port for 600 years. When the coastline shifted and the harbor silted, the city was abandoned and buried by river sediment — extraordinary preservation.

Walk the Decumanus Maximus past two-story apartment buildings with ground-floor shops, a bakery with millstones in place, public latrines seating twenty in a sociable semicircle. The theater hosts summer performances. The Piazzale delle Corporazioni has mosaic "signs" advertising rope makers, grain merchants, and ship owners. Roma-Lido train from Piramide (30 min), 12 euros, three hours minimum. Undercrowded. More rewarding than the Forum, according to archaeology lovers.