Taranto (anc. Tarentum), a seaport of Southern Italy, in the province of Lecce, situated on a rocky islet between the Mare Grande or Gulf of Taranto and the Mare Piccolo, an extensive natural harbour on the east side of the town, 72 miles SSE. of Bari by rail. The harbour is sheltered by two small islands, San Paolo and San Pietro, the Charades of antiquity, and is closed by Cape San Vito on the south-east. The town is joined to the mainland by a six-arched bridge on the east side, and on the west by an ancient Byzantine aqueduct. The principal buildings are a modernised cathedral dedicated to St Cataldo, a dubious 6th-century 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 shell-fish, and a considerable portion of the population (1891, 25,246) finds employment in oyster and mussel fisheries. The honey and fruit are still famous also, but the people are to-day as lazy as in Horace's time.
The ancient Tarentum, founded by a body of Spartan emigrants about 708 B.C., grew to be the sovereign city of Magna Græcia. Here flourished about 400 B.C. the philosopher and geometer Archytas, under whom it became the centre of the Pythagorean sect. At the height of its greatness it insolently provoked a quarrel with Rome (281), was saved for a little 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 masters, sharing the fortunes of the kingdom of Naples.
There is a German history of ancient Tarentum by Döhle (1877), an exhaustive history by De Vincentiis (Naples, 1878 et seq.), and a topographical description by Gagliardo (Tarent. 1886).