Ostia Antica like Pompeii (3)

(ANSA) - Rome, February 28 - The interministerial economic planning committee (CIPE) on Wednesday approved a Grand Project for Ostia Antica along the lines of the one that has enhanced visits to Pompeii.
    The CIPE earmarked some 40 million euros to valorise and reopen some areas of the ancient Roman port as well as setting up a new unified visit system linking up the archaeological site of Portus and highlighting the landscape of the area, sources said.
    The project will also set up a university campus offering a new degree course by the Roma Tre University, also linked to Ostia's university annex.
    In 2014 Rome's archaeological superintendecy announced new findings at Ostia, saying the "secret" site was bigger than Pompeii.
    The "exceptional results" revealed that Rome was "split in two by the Tiber River in the First Century BC," it said.
    The find was enormous, including towers and warehouses as well as boundary walls that scholars say had been missing from what had been previously recovered from the popular site located on the southwestern edge of Rome.
    Experts from Italy and Britain were involved in the discovery, using special equipment to identify buried ancient walls, road layouts and structures buried beneath the earth.
    The finding shed new light on how important Ostia was to trade in the first 200 years of the first millennium, said Mariarosaria Barbera, superintendent of Rome's archaeological heritage.
    Ancient Roman Ostia, at the since-moved mouth of the River Tiber, was built into a massive complex under the Emperor Claudius and given the name Portus, meaning port.
    It was expanded under successive emperors such as Trajan and Hadrian and served as a base for many of the empire's greatest expeditions.
    Ostia was also the depot channelling the vast wealth, grain and other supplies needed to feed the appetites of the imperial city.