Taranto
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a port of southern Italy, in the province seaof Lecce; on a rocky islet between the Mare Grande or Gulf of Taranto and the Mare Piccolo, an extensive natural harbor on the E. side of the town; 72 miles S. S. E. of Bari. The harbor is sheltered by two small islands, San Paolo and San Pietro, the Chœrades of antiquity, and is closed by Cape San Vito on the S. E. The town is joined to the mainland by a 6-arched bridge on the E. side, and on the W. by an ancient Byzantine aqueduct. The principal buildings are a modernized cathedral dedicated to St. Cataldo, a dubious 6thcentury Irishman said to have been the first bishop of Tarentum, and a castle erected by Charles V. The Mare Piccolo is still famous for its shellfish. The honey and fruit are still famous also, but the people are today as lazy as in Horace's time. The ancient Tarentum, founded by a body of Spartan emigrants about 708 to be the sovereign city of C., grew B. C., Magna Græcia. Here flourished about 400 b. c. the philosopher Archytas, under whom it became the and geometer center of the Pythagorean height of its greatness it insolently prosect. At the voked a quarrel with Rome (281), was saved for a while by Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, but taken in 272, and retaken and punished severely in 207 for revolting to the side of Hannibal five years before. Later it belonged to Byzantine, Saracen, and Norman, and shared the fortunes of the kingdom of Naples. Pop. about 56,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 gave Taranto 56,000 people, a famous shellfish harvest in the Mare Piccolo, and a jab at the laziness of its citizens; the city now holds roughly 190,000 and is dominated by heavy industry. On the night of 11 November 1940 British torpedo aircraft flying from HMS Illustrious crippled three Italian battleships at anchor in the harbour, an attack studied closely in Japan before Pearl Harbor. Since 1965 the vast steelworks on the edge of town, long the largest in Europe and known for most of its life as Italsider and then Ilva, has made Taranto a byword in Italy for industrial pollution, and dioxin contamination has at times forced the closure of the very mussel beds Collier's praised. The Greek foundation by Spartan settlers around 706 BC, Archytas, Pyrrhus and the Roman capture of 272 BC all stand as described.
Written for this edition, 2026.