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Iniziative speciali

  • " MITREI E RELIGIONI"

dal 22 aprile, 2008
al 22 aprile, 2008
   
  ALLA SCOPERTA DEL LITORALE ROMANO
 
  IL PARCO ARCHEOLOGICO DI OSTIA ANTICA

 LE VITITE SARANNO EFFETUATE ...

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Events and news

  • Concerto Festa del Lavoro

dal 3 maggio, 2008
al 3 maggio, 2008

"CONCERTO DELLA FESTA DEL LAVORO"
Ostia Chamber Orchestra
Direttore M° Carlo Rizzari

PROGRAMMA

L.VAN BEETHOVEN
...

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The Tiber River and the Seaports


THE RIVER


The gods and men chose this place to found the city with a good reason: extremely wealthy hills, a useful river by which it was easy to transport the internal products and receive supplies transported via sea; a place close to the sea enough to exploit its opportunities but hardly exposed to the enemy attacks thanks to its closeness to the centre of Italy, most suitable for the city growth; the very greatness of the latter proves so.
Historian Titus Livius used to write this, well aware, just as the citizens, of the importance of the Tiber for the development of the city.

The river starts at the foot of the Fumaiolo mountain and after running through Tuscany, Umbria and Latium, flows into the Thyrrenian sea, near Ostia.
It was anciently called Albula because of its light colour.
It took the name of Tiberis according to the legend telling the King Tiberius drowned in its waters.
The Romans immediately understood the importance to gain control of the river, and above all its mouth.
According to the tradition, king Ancus Marcius gave Rome the possibility to overlook the sea by founding the colony of Ostia, which became the city harbour.


TIBER BOAT TOURS


An interesting river navigation gives us the chance to observe directly the environmental, naturalistic and fauna reality which still survives in the Tiber and its delta. In the last years, the river Tiber recovered its charm, and thanks to the purification of urban waste dumped into it, its waters and its banks are starting to be repopulated by a big variety of fl ora and fauna.
We report the return of bleaks, rudds, carps, crucians, eels, basses, grey mullets.
On the banks the vegetation rich in penduline tit, sedge warbler and reed warbler, gives shelter to many birds among which the heron ashen, the little egret, the night heron, the kingfi sher, the snipe and the stilt, while during the winter months we can sight cormorants. In the pastures, instead, we can find foxes, weasels, porcupines, stone martens, wild geese and cranes.
With the motorboat, not only can we sail up the river mouth, but also follow guided tours to excavations of Ostia Antica, to Trajan’s harbour and to the Necropolis of Isola Sacra.


THE ANCIENT HARBOURS


Rome’s supremacy on the Mediterranean Sea involved an increase of sea traffic and gave rise to the necessity of building a big harbour where boats from all the empire territory could moor, to bring supplies to the city.
Caesar and Augustus were the first to become aware of the need to provide the Tiber mouth with a larger harbour, but they hadn’t time to realize their project, completed by the emperor Claudius.
The Portus Augusti, named so by Nero during the inauguration in 54 A.D., had a very high lighthouse, realized by creating a base with the famous ship of Caligula, (on which he carried an obelisk from Egypt to Rome, today it is in St. Peter square), which was sunken by loading it with lime and marble, creating a kind of island.
The Portus Augusti had a short life because it was too close to the Tiber, thus was sanded up and closed.
About fifty years later, the emperor Trajan decided to restore and finish Claudius’ work but he added an inner, more sheltered, harbour.

The new basin was perfectly hexagonal, on a 32 hectare area, it was opened in 113 A.D: and came out a masterpiece of ancient engineering.

The regional geography also changed its look, the Tiber and the Trajan artificial canal (now the Fiumicino canal) marked the boundary of an artificial island that will later be called Isola Sacra.
During Trajan’s reign, Ostia’s lighthouse was built on the left bank of the river mouth, where today stands the medieval Boacciana Tower, which reutilized its foundations.
Later the harbour stopped its business and the populated areas neighbouring it were left, because it came under the jurisdiction of Constantinople sovereigns and their carelessness, and because of the barbaric invasions.


ROME TOURISTIC HARBOUR


After the fall into oblivion, Ostia came back to have people talk about it, about the Tiber and its harbours.
After the city recovery, Paolo Orlando thought to build a new harbour which could rejoin the coastline to Rome also through a waterway.
His dream was to see Rome connected to the sea through two harbours, one not far from the Tiber mouth, the other one where the basilica of St. Paul or the Gasometer now stand, by making the river navigable for coasting ships.
His project was fulfilled partially only a few years ago, in 1998, because of construction of Rome’s tourist harbour on the left bank of the Tiber, with an architectonic style inspired by the Roman one.
It can hold up to one thousand boats and has about eighty shops, two bars, several restaurants, a bank, a yachting club, the Naval Police HQ and an attended car park which contains up to two thousand vehicles.
During the summer, the harbour is a stop of the “charter” circuit, which includes Ostia, Costa Smeralda in Sardinia, the islands of Capri and Elba.


THE FISHERMEN VILLAGE


The first fishermen came from Naples and in 1890 they settled in the channel, east of Ostia, between the sea and Castelfusano pinewood.
At first they stayed in wood houses built on the sand. Because of their bravery to settle into an area that hadn’t been completely reclaimed yet, the Religious Association of St. Nicholas in the Basilica of Bari gave them a statue carved in Trani marble, representing St. Nicholas, patron saint of fishers.
When, in 1931, the town council decided to build a new stretch of sea front, the statue was moved and the fishermen’s huts were demolished.
Only the intervention of Margherita Sarfatti, a famous writer of the time, prevented the fishermen’s repatriation and they decided to build six red twofloor houses.
At present the Village stands out for the fervent activity of the fishermen, who pursue their forefathers traditions and maintain a strong link with the sea, symbol of wealth and prosperity to them.
This is the reason why it is exciting to visit the village, whose life turns still rotates around the little dock, where the fishermen moor their boats, unload and sell fish; every year, towards the end of September, the Clam Festival take place, and the citizens and tourists can taste the famous spaghetti appositely prepared for the event, and other fish recipes.
Recently, an intervention for the development of the area has been realized, following the approval of the town upgrading planning scheme provided for by the current institutions.


THE NAVAL TRADITION


Back in the 1930s, Ostia’s seaplane base hosted important aeronautical yards (for example Saiman), which witnessed not only historical exploits such as Italo Balbo’s one in 1933, but also had great expertise in the building of wooden structures.
This tradition surely constituted a rich soil, thus, in the postwar period, a carpenter group from Limite sull’Arno, moved to the Roman Coast, originating a new naval tradition which is still successful today. In 1945, many families in the shipbuilding industry, especially from Tuscany and Liguria, formed the Ostia Naval Cooperative and they put in it all their experience and naval skills.
At the time, almost all contracts were with the army, but production soon included pleasure boats, which the shipyards still build today, obtaining a worldwide success for some of their most ‘prestigious’ works.
The Canados shipyards are undoubtedly the most representative in the province; they have an avant-garde dockyard, and in their fifty years of activity, they produced motor yachts, sailing-boats and patrol boats fir the Port Authorities.
These shipyards hand down an old and enchanting “craft” with passion and skill.


SAINT NICHOLAS FROM BARI'S CHURCH


The parish church, built in the Fishing Village thanks to Cardinal Vicar Ugo Poletti in 1951, was entrusted to Rome’s diocesan clergy.
The church, which overlooks the sea and is named after the statue representing St. Nicholas, patron saint of fishermen, was presented to the villagers by the Religious Association of St. Nicholas from Bari, which is still in the Village.

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