Travel section On the outskirts of Rome, an ancient city rivals Pompeii

The ruins of Ostia Antica, on the outskirts of Rome, remain as captivating as I remembered from decades ago. As a teenager growing up in the Italian capital, I would join classmates to perform school plays in Ostia Antica's ancient open-air theater. Costumed in togas made of bedsheets, we'd cheerfully mangle Aristophanes' classical plays then scamper off to roam the ruins, poking into ivy-draped passageways and secluded rooms and clambering over fallen columns.

Ostia Antica, once the ancient port of Rome, has hundreds of 2,000-year-old buildings spread over hundreds of acres. Yet somehow it's always eclipsed by its Italian neighbor Pompeii, a city frozen in time by the volcanic ash blast of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. that has become one of the world's best-known archaeological sites.