Ostia: Nature and Antiquity

I was always interested in Ostia Antica and in May when I've been to Italy I finally could visit this ancient city. The beautifully preserved ruins of Ostia lie twenty miles from Rome. By the 2nd century AD, it had become a flourishing commercial center inhabited by upwards of 100,000 people, whose apartment buildings, taverns, and grocery shops are still intact. But later the river Tiber became shallow, and changed its mainstream.
Tyrrhenian Sea waves covered the city with water and silt...

 

It was striking impression when I walked down the ancient city. Main street, then I turned into the lane. Well preserved ruins of buildings and mosaics were everywhere but the nature tried to recapture its territory occupied by the ancient Romans. 

 

Plants made their way among the bricks of the ancient walls, through the lime obtained by burning the ancient city's marble.

It was completely silence... No modern houses, roads or telephone wires were visible. I could hear only the crickets in the umbrella-like pines. Many of pines were covered with lianas and vines extending along the trunks to the tops.

Walking along Ostia's main street I've seen deep ruts left by four-wheeled carts used to ferry merchandise and baggage between Rome and Ostia and millions of poppies growing on the both sides of the main road. Tall cypresses, pines, bushes have grown between walls, statues, on squares.

Behind the theater is the Forum of the Corporations, so called because the offices of sixty-four maritime companies. Now dandelions, poppies, oats and veronica reigned on the ground in front of each office. 

 

I found a cluster of four-story apartment buildings that were inhabited by middle-class families. Many of buildings still have the ground floor shops, kitchens with pipes that channeled hot running water.
It was lunch time and I decided to sit in an ancient room and have a snack. Quietness, high pines, a riot of wild flowers and trees was around me.

Have you been before to such ancient places? 
What is your opinion about nature displacing antiquity?
Would you like to visit a place like Ostia Antica?