Taranto

Capital city of the Apulian province, in Italy, Taranto is a city of 192,520 inhabitants which overlooks  the Ionian Sea, also known as the City of the two seas because it is washed by the Great Sea, or bay of the Great Sea, where vessels can remain in standby, and within the Mar Piccolo. 
It was founded in 706 BC by Spartan settlers who arrived here due to expansionist and commercial reasons. According to an antique legend, the founder of the city could have been the Spartan hero Falanto: consulting  the Delphic oracle, it predicted that he would have been the founder of a city in a place where rain fell from a clear sky and  would have wet his forehead. 
Arriving in Apulia (Italy), one night his wife Etra, a name that means in fact "clear blu sky", recalling the difficult situations which she had lived and what she went through, she let herself go in a cry and when her tears had wet her husband’s forehead, all of a sudden he remembering  the prophecy, he founded the city.
Today Taranto is the base of a large and important industrial and commercial port, with with an arsenal of the Navy and an important naval station. The main economical activities of this city are agriculture, fisheries, industry, aviation, textiles, food and chemical industries and crafts, with a particular propensity of its people to work with wood, glass and ceramics.

What to see

Taranto is a city full of reminders of its past. Among these the remains of the Doric Temple, an ancient place of worship, the archaeological remains of the greek-Roman necropolis in which you can observe significant evidence of chamber tombs, and semi-chamber grave, the crypt of the Redeemer, the many illustrious palace where great personalities lived, such as Palazzo d'Ayala Valva and Palazzo Pantaleo. 
Among the religious monuments of great historical and architectural importance is the Cathedral of San Cataldo, of Byzantine origin, but from the beautiful Baroque façade, and the Gothic Church of San Domenico Maggiore. Of note is the Hypogeum De Beaumont Bonelli Bellacicco, a structure capable of telling the geological history of the area from 65 million years ago and contains the following tracks Magna Greek, Byzantine, medieval and eighteenth century. 
Then there is the Aragonese Castle or Castel Sant'Angelo, whose construction was started originally by the Byzantines as far back as 916, before being expanded in 1486 at the hands of Ferdinand II of Aragon. On the island of Sao Paulo there was the Fortress of Laços built by Napoleon Bonaparte at the end of 700, which made Taranto one of the military outposts in the Mediterranean. 
Among the examples of civil architecture of great importance is the work of the Rotating Bridge opened in 1887 by Admiral Acton, 89.9 meters long, the bridge connects the island to the peninsula of the ancient town of Borgo Nuovo. Since 1958, the bridge is also known as Ponte di San Francesco da Paola, the patron saint of seafarers, which was dedicated in 1958 to mark the end of major works of modernization that have made the electric arm movement. 
Taranto in Apulia (Italy) is also the home of several natural reserves, such as the Oasis-La Vela Marsh, a protected area located on the shores of the Mar Piccolo mainly from the marsh, an important center of radiation of the avifauna of the surrounding areas managed by the presidium of the WWF city.