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Iulia Procula’s face is tilted, as if with the fascinated gaze of a tourist visiting the Ostia Antica Archaeological Park, watching the daily life. He looks at us from the cover Guide to the Ostians Museumreminds us that Ostia, like several other archaeological sites, offers a monumentality of everyday life.
The recently reorganized museum is an art history manual, since Ostia was a center of sculpture, mosaic and painting production, without forgetting the monumentality of architecture: “Ostia gave life to a multiethnic and multicultural society, an unprecedented melting pot that, perhaps only today, has returned to our globalized civilization”, writes Alessandro D’Alessio, director of the Ostia Antica Park.
Reenactments and guides tell the story of the years, of religious and political power. There were some, those who allowed themselves to build busts and monuments, and those artisans, merchants and small entrepreneurs immortalized in marble and terracotta reliefs. The cemetery is a mirror of life, from birth to death: sarcophagi and reliefs, as well as aspects of funerary rituals and ideologies, testify to the existence of a highly specialized manufacturing industry. The decorative elements of the tomb doors from the Via Ostiense cemetery are splendid: the elaborate door panels represent the spirits of the seasons. These winged figures remind us that life and death are nothing more than the passing of the seasons, from spring to winter. It was the same in the first and second centuries AD as it is today.
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