Emporium, the ancient river port

Livy places the building of the Emporium in 193 BC, by the aediles Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, and its paving in stone in 174 BC. Roma Capitale's tourism service dates the port to the 1st century AD. The two accounts are not reconciled here. Behind the travertine quay stood two ranges of warehouses fronting a cryptoporticus, with offices above. Goods landed at Ostia and Portus were brought here and redistributed: wine, grain, garum, and above all oil. The port peaked under Trajan in the 2nd century and was abandoned in the 4th, then buried, and in the Middle Ages the ground was used for burials. It was rediscovered from the end of the nineteenth century and excavated in 1868 to 1870, during the embankment works, and again in 1952. The marbles landed here gave via Marmorata its name, the street that connects the port of Ripa with Porta San Paolo; after the decline of Rome the unworked blocks lay as res nullius for centuries, an open-air quarry of part-worked stone.