Italian Trip: Taranto - The Old City

So the story of Taranto, the old city of 500 ish years, not the ancient one as that would involve many degrees in history and archaeology and a post the size of an 1000 encyclopaedia!

So this is how we see it from our experiences in Taranto and also told to us by some locals … so don’t hang me out to dry if all the info is not totally correct, it will be Italian correct!

These columns are the remains of a ancient Roman building that were discovered in the 1970’s when they were pulling down a 500 year old building … that alone blows my mind.

Rough, Gritty and Raw is the best way to describe this

amazing place.

I say it’s amazing now, that’s because we have now experienced it first hand and had time to get the good out of the old town and the people who are rebuilding lives here.

(Photo by Sandy Moore)

It hits all the senses,

sight, smell, sounds, taste and touch and also a feelings.

The building below on the left is like so many that had their windows and doors bricked up in the 1960/70’s leaving only a small opening on the ground floor for access. This was so the people could still live here 🙀 and work in the

steel factory over the bay.

It would have been a very dir place to live, but the poor people of that time had no options.This was done to supposedly protect the workers from the falling toxic waste coming from one of the world biggest steel factories of that time.

This it did not do and the old town has a huge cancer and respiratory diseases per head of population.

So by the mid 1970’s the old town was all but abandoned and most of the residents were moved to new cleaner and safer appartments on the new town that the government had built from them.

The court case only came to some sort of an end in 2021 when the directors of the steel company were finally

charged and jailed.

Much bigger story, this is just my small and uneducated insight.

The first feelings was of sadness for the town when you arrive in the repressive humid heat, the smell of rotting garage/seafood. The stench in places where the sewer system has broken and the deserted and derelict building everywhere.

However out of the decay over the past 15 years people have come back and reinvesting in the town like Hotel L’Arcangelo where we are staying.

Our beautifully restored room down the ally on the second floor with the view back to the

“noisey town clock”

It’s ironic that the very rusting steel frames to support the old building came from the factory that polluted the area.

Some of the wonderfull street art in the narrow allies to help brighten the area.

Walking into the old section and some places you just still wouldn't go by nights. The streets still have some locals living in these abandoned building that are not happy to have tourism coming into the old town as that has bought police and a spotlight onto the drug scene.

I was walking later one afternoon and a small what looked like rubbish was drop from a high window and picked up by someone, which at first I (being so naive) thought he was just picking up rubbish but thought why is he only pick up one bit of rubbish when there was some much rubbish covering the ally.

Silly Pete! Get out of there!