The settlements at the Tiber mouth are, from west to east, Fiumicino, next door to Rome’s international airport, a fishing village on the canal by which the Tiber reaches the sea; Ostia Antica the ancient port of Rome; and Lido di Ostia, a seaside resort with a long sandy beach backed by pine-woods and an area reserved for hunting.

Fiumicino has excellent fish restaurants, a safari park and a ship museum with reconstructions of Roman galleys from Ostia Antica.

Ostia Antica is among Italy’s most evocative classical sites. A complete 4thC BC city has been exposed without too much archaeological tampering: forum, temple, a long main street, a street of balconies, an amphitheatre, shops, public baths with hot and cold showers (advertised with a wonderful mosaic of Neptune driving seahorses through shoals of fish), a market-place with oil jars still casually scattered, warehouses with mosaic pictures on the dockside in front of them, telling you where to unload your fruits, wines and timber. The wall decorations in the merchants’ houses, inspired by the exotic wares which passed through the port, are very pretty. There is much to see at Ostia Antica and the site is never crowded (closed Monday); but it is the atmosphere of the old cosmopolitan, uninhibited life of a seaport in its far-off heyday which comes across most vividly.