Road station
Portum Augusti
(near Fiumicino) (Barrington)
Listen to the story
Portus Augusti, the emperor's harbour near Fiumicino, carries no name on the map at all, only a splendid drawing of a harbour. Emperor Claudius built it about three kilometres from Ostia, and Trajan later added a six-sided inner basin. The drawing seems to show the older harbour of Claudius, or perhaps an idealised picture of it. Its lighthouse, the Roman writer Suetonius says, stood on a sunken cargo ship once used to carry an obelisk, and excavation has confirmed it. Oddly, the roads one would expect from here to Rome and Ostia are not drawn.