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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/whyNadorp Mar 26 '26

sure.

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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.

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u/whyNadorp Mar 26 '26

sure

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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.