Portus

Portus is the Latin word for harbor. In ancient Rome, Portus denotes the imperial harbor complex at the mouth of the Tiber, near Ostia, at today’s Portus-Fiumicino area in Lazio, Italy. It was established in the 1st century CE during the reign of Claudius and expanded by Trajan to supplement Ostia as Rome’s principal harbor. The harbor consisted of two large artificial basins—the Portus Augusti and an additional basin created or expanded under Trajan—linked to the sea by channels and to Ostia by the Canale di Traiano. The basins were flanked by moles and supported a vast operational zone of warehouses, cisterns, and docks that stored and transshipped grain and other commodities from across the empire, especially Egypt and North Africa.

Over time, the combined effects of silting and changing trade routes diminished Portus’s role. By late antiquity the site had declined, and Ostia remained the more active harbor for a time before further declines in the medieval period.

In modern scholarship, Portus has been studied through extensive excavations commencing in the 19th century and a major ongoing program known as the Portus Project since the early 2000s, which has mapped the basins, their channels, and the surrounding urban fabric. The site is located in the Lazio region of Italy, near the town of Fiumicino.