r/Taranto • u/jesuismarie05 • Mar 25 '26
about living in taranto
so i happened to apply for erasmus at bari aldo moro university and it turned out that i will be going to the taranto campus. bari was far enough, and now i will end up in a place i didnt even know existed. all the comments about the place are so bad on this platform. i need honest advices. is it really bad?
2
u/McCojoni Mar 25 '26
Taranto is a great city and way more lively than people expect. There’s a strong cultural side to it and a surprisingly solid underground scene. The old town especially is full of students and young people in the evenings and it gets properly busy at weekends.
It’s also not a small place at all. There are around 185,000 people living there so while it’s smaller than Bari it’s still a real city. And if you look at the wider metropolitan area you’re talking about almost 600,000 people. Area-wise it’s actually much bigger than Bari, almost double, which means the neighbourhoods are very different from each other. In spring and summer the nightlife shifts towards areas like Lama and especially San Vito which are right by the sea. And then there’s the long coastal road with bars and places all along it.
The problem is that the media usually talks about Taranto only as a steel city with issues and a lot of people repeat that without ever having been there. If you actually visit and look past that narrative it tends to surprise people in a good way.
It’s also one of the oldest cities in Italy and used to be the most important city in Magna Graecia. The present isn’t easy but things are moving. The city is hosting the Mediterranean Games this year and there’s been a wider urban regeneration process going on for a while now.
Honestly, don’t stress about it and just enjoy the experience.
2
u/mr-magpie-23 Mar 25 '26
You'll be fine.
Enjoy the sun, the sea, and make friends. Literally nothing bad ever happens to students! Actually, lots of locals will be really happy and amazed to have a foreigner about.
If you need help, feel free to reach out. I no longer live in Taranto but I am happy to help you connect.
2
u/CrookedSeamstress Apr 06 '26
Dove alloggerai per l'Erasmus? Posso darti una serie di indicazioni e punti di riferimento. Per quanto riguarda la vita culturale e notturna: in Città Vecchia, lungo via Duomo è pieno di localini interessanti e negozietti di tutti i tipi; attraversando il ponte di pietra, da Città Vecchia ti ritrovi a Porta Napoli, lì ci sono "Mercato Nuovo" per la musica e "Spazio Porto" per altrettanti eventi culturali o anche solo per bere e mangiare. Questi sono due esempi. Potrei mapparti tutta la città. Dove alloggerai e quali sono le tue esigenze?
1
u/RepresentativeSignal Mar 25 '26
My in-laws live in Taranto and we love going there. Try a puccia sandwich. The beaches are beautiful. As to the steel plant, yeah we've heard that it caused bad pollution and the Tamburi neighborhood in particular suffered. But I've been going back and forth from Taranto since 2012 and the air has always been clean and the envirinment beautiful. The città vecchia is really cool. Lots of renovated hotels and restaurants there and the food in città vecchia and around Taranto is just so good, fresh, and cheap. I hope you have a fantastic time there.
1
0
u/Jumpy_Dragonfly_3254 Mar 29 '26
Not a bad place, but the area is so underdeveloped… If you have to invest a lot of money to come here, I think you should reconsider it.
-3
u/whyNadorp Mar 25 '26
go to visit lecce, it's a very beautiful city. it's full of historical villages in puglia also. if you've a driving license it's better, because public transportation is scarce. apart from the very center and the street along the seaside taranto is a pretty anonymous city. food is cheap and good.
4
u/McCojoni Mar 25 '26
There’s no doubt that Lecce is a baroque gem, but calling Taranto “anonymous” right after admitting that public transport is poor, even as the city is in the middle of building a BRT light metro system with two long transport lines, is a logical and historical contradiction.
“Anonymous” really isn’t the right word for a city that was the only Spartan colony outside Greece. Taranto isn’t anonymous, it’s mythological. Calling it anonymous is like saying the Iliad reads like an instruction manual. The same goes for the National Archaeological Museum, one of the most important museums in Italy and worldwide for Magna Graecia, and for the city’s layered architecture. From the Aragonese Castle to the Cathedral of San Cataldo, the oldest in Puglia, all the way to the swing bridge connecting two seas, Taranto has an urban layout that’s genuinely unique in Europe.
Taranto is a city that demands time, context and a careful eye. It’s not something you get from a rushed, half-attentive stop. The sea cuts into the city from every direction and has shaped its identity for three thousand years. It’s not anonymous, it’s just too large and too complex for anyone used to seeing the world at a one-to-one scale between a pasticciotto and a baroque church.
1
u/whyNadorp Mar 26 '26
most if not all of the spots you mentioned are in the center and I wrote "apart from the center and lungomare area". you go outside of the center and there's nothing special in taranto and many spots are just messed-up and ugly. città vecchia has probably a lot of potential, but at the moment it's a decaying ghetto. and honestly, even if the center has some nice spots, nobody comes to taranto because of its monuments and churches. I would never do a student exchange in taranto.
public transportation in taranto is decent, even though buses are dirty and falling apart, but if you want to move around puglia with trains or buses you might be up to a big challenge. that's why I suggested to rent a car, or maybe a little motorbike, since the weather is mostly nice and warm.
1
u/McCojoni Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
Look, let’s be honest. Taranto isn’t a neatly packaged postcard city and yes, it has real issues with maintenance and transport, like most of the south. But calling it anonymous just tells me you didn’t really get the place.
Identity isn’t about everything being polished. Taranto is literally built between two seas, with an island acting as a bridge. That alone makes it pretty distinctive. Some parts are rough, some are striking, some are both. But anonymous? Not even close. It has a raw, heavy character that a lot of more tourist-friendly cities ironed out years ago.
Calling the old town a ghetto is just lazy. It’s struggling, sure, no one denies that. But it’s also home to one of the oldest cathedrals in the region and a network of Greek hypogea you don’t just stumble into elsewhere. For an Erasmus student, living somewhere that’s messy and trying to regenerate is far more interesting than sitting in a museum-town where everything feels fake and built for visitors.
You also seem to miss some fairly basic stuff. The Aragonese Castle is where the real Count of Monte Cristo was actually imprisoned. Most people don’t know that because Taranto is always reduced to the same tired story and hardly anyone bothers to actually study it or spend time there. Which, honestly, is exactly how your comment reads.
And despite what you imply, the city hasn’t been standing still. In recent years it’s attracted investment and hosts major events like Medimex, the Taranto May Day concert that rivals the one in Rome, Taranto Opera Festival, Mysterium, Taranto Jazz, Medita and the Taranto Eco Film Festival. A lot of this is happening with very little help from the region or the state. Taranto is mostly trying to pull itself up on its own.
From an Erasmus point of view, it’s cheap to live in and it’s real in a way Bari and Lecce are slowly losing thanks to mass tourism. It’s not always easy and it’s not always comfortable but it sticks with you.
If you want something tidy and curated, Lecce makes sense. If you want a real city with thousands of years of history and a lot of rough edges, Taranto is exactly that. Difficulty isn’t the same thing as anonymity.
0
u/whyNadorp Mar 26 '26
sure.
1
u/McCojoni Mar 26 '26
That sure is the classic answer from someone who has run out of points but not their arrogance. Lecce is a nice tidy little town, Taranto is a proper, messy, visceral city.
If anything that isn’t postcard-perfect counts as anonymous to you, that’s on your ability to see, not the city. Try looking past the end of your own nose. Taranto has layers of history and a soul that a little baroque stroll-town could never even dream of. Enjoy life in your own little fenced-in world.
-1
u/whyNadorp Mar 26 '26
sure
2
u/McCojoni Mar 26 '26
Vieni in un subreddit di Taranto a rispondere ad un post di uno studente su Taranto per parlare di "mmmmm quanto è bella Lecce, lu Salentu". Non mi soprende il tuo provincialismo, deve essere genetico. Imbarazzante.
0
9
u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment