Surrounded by Mare Grande and Mare Piccolo, Taranto perpetuates its seafaring vocation, though nowadays the waters of the ancient lagoon - cut into two parts by the peninsula della Penna – harbour only a part of the former Navy and its arsenal is sharing the same negative trend of almost all the Italian dockyards. But as compensation a new city is progressively developing beyond the small circle of the old town, turned into an island after the creation of the artificial channel overcome by the renowned swing bridge. The medieval town is the trait d’union between the industrial appendix and the modern city, which is now the real representation of the contemporary Taranto, although the its inhabitants continue to call it the Borough.

The age-old cathedral of S. Cataldo, restored to its original Romanesque shapes, the high Baroque double stairs and the magnificent ogival portal of S. Domenico and the massive Aragonese castle overlooking the channel are the symbols par excellence of the holographic Taranto, but the lanes of the old town are by now a small part of a bigger urban, commercial and industrial area, which is forward-looking but still preserves a clear sense of its past.

In the «town of the two seas» of mythical Spartan ancestry the new and the old have married, although they keep on living in separate rooms. Maybe this is the recipe of this happy marriage: here the medieval heritage and the modern reality cohabits spontaneously, without the superimposed laws regulating the life of other historical towns, where politics of compromises have upset the architectural fabric usually to the detriment of the ancient areas.

Moreover, the phenomenon of mimesis between the past and the present can be found in all the district of Taranto. It gives a new appearance to secular realities, especially in the west on the ancient polis, on the lightly rolling ups and downs of the Murge and on the Gulf side of the Salento.

The southern appendix of the Murge is still definitely karstic: but the harsh white plateau dotted with thorny bushes nowadays does not overlook the desolated marshes that once were found here.

Impressive drainage works have largely recuperated the Arneo marshes and now vineyards and olive grooves grow in this place, once the reign of malaria. The area is rich in farms and on the coast there are several beach resorts. Tourism has become a reality and every summer tens of thousands of vacationers, also from foreign countries, visit this area.

Praia a Mare, Marechiaro, Lido Bruno, Lido Gàndoli, enclosed between two tors, Lido di Leporano, Lido Silvana with its vast pinewood, are by now beach resorts of assured future success, if they will be able to survive the risk of a massive cementification.

The recent tourist boom is reaching also the hinterland towns: Leporano – Horace sang its mild climate, the wine and the honey when Saturo and Aulona were prosperous towns; Pulsano with its majestic baronial castle; the villages leaning against the slope of the Serra del Belvedere, with the picturesque Albanian oases of San Giorgio Ionico and Monteparano.

The symbol of Taranto is the swing bridge with the Aragonese castle reflecting on the waters.

The unstoppable march of progress has reached also Roccaforzata, Faggiano, Lizzano, Torricella, agricultural conglomerates in the heart of the Murge Tarantine. At the same time, the triple town walls of the Messanian town Manduria – whose red wines are the most representative, together with those of Trani, of the Apulian ones – with the remains of the metallic walls, the cave known as the spring of Plinio, the 16th century buildings, the Gothic-Romaneseque cathedral, the 18th century palace Imperiali, the characteristic ghetto whose houses have no windows, all these features suggest once again to move backward, to go back in time, in a land of castles and watchtowers, sunburnt villages, ravines and ridges, rocky edges, karstic boldness but also of Mediterranean desertions.

If it is true that gastronomy is the secret portrait of a country, the tables of Taranto celebrate a wedding between sea and land, Jonian sea and Murgia, with seafruits, fresh fish, shewers, cold cuts, the white wine of Martina Franca contiguous to the jug of red Manduria. This also is the scent of Taranto.

Gastone Geron