Lost Place: Why Tarentum's once magnificent old town is now deserted

In the old town of Taranto—or Taranto, as the Italians call it—time stood still in the 1960s and never moved forward again. It just stands and stands and stands. Nothing has been maintained here for decades.

In many places you can still see how magnificent the baroque palaces must have once been.

Source: Conny Derdak

Beautiful houses? Not to be found. Not anymore. The once magnificent medieval churches, Gothic monasteries, and Baroque palaces of this city in southern Italy have been left to their own devices. For years. For decades.

A road runs around the old town. Traffic is enormous, but hardly anyone ventures into the old town.

Source: Conny Derdak

Anyone heading to the once magnificent old town of Taranto should be prepared for a real lost-place feeling. Where around 30,000 people once lived, there are now said to be only a few hundred left. On a dreary April afternoon, even those people are nowhere to be seen in the narrow streets. If you do run into anyone at all, it's a few curious tourists.

Inhabited or not? In very few cases is it clearly evident. Hardly anyone lives in Taranto's old town.

Source: Conny Derdak

Among the ruins, it can feel truly creepy. Doors are boarded shut, archways bricked up, windowpanes smashed, and plants grow on the balconies – not from pots, but from the ground.

The greenery grows on the balconies of Taranto even without human intervention.

Source: Conny Derdak

Many buildings are held in place with thick steel girders to prevent their fragile walls from toppling over. No matter how small or large the building, no matter how majestic it must have once appeared, nothing in Taranto's old town is safe from decay. Only a few churches appear to be still intact.

Many walls are held in shape by steel beams.

Source: Conny Derdak

The barren stone walls are covered in graffiti. "Stop killing us" is one of the inscriptions. The question inevitably arises: What is going on here? How could a once magnificent city have deteriorated to such an extent?

Street art breathes a little life back into the colorless old town.

Source: Conny Derdak

Its location alone makes it unique: The old town of Taranto is built on a rock. It is one kilometer long and 300 meters wide. Like an island, it stands almost self-sufficient in the water – were it not connected to the rest of the city by two bridges.

From a distance, it has not yet lost its splendor: the old town of Taranto sits imposingly on a rock.

Source: IMAGO/Pond5 Images

One bridge, the one in the south, connects the old town island with the modern, "pretty" part of the city. Here, on the mainland, there are palm trees, elegant facades, and a pretty shopping street.

This is what Taranto can look like: The elegant Piazza Maria Immacolata is located in the more modern part of the city.

Source: Conny Derdak

If you cross the bridge to the Old Town Island, everything is still relatively intact: a large castle, an active university building, a few small cafés.

At the beginning of the old town is a branch of the University of Bari. This building is in good condition.

Source: Conny Derdak

But with every step away from the mainland, it becomes quieter. Dirtier. Darker. Here, the old town of Taranto becomes a ghost town. It's a real shame, because until the 1970s, Taranto was a beautiful and thriving jewel on the Ionian Sea. The population was prosperous.

The further you go into the old town, the more desolate it becomes.

Source: Conny Derdak

What lies at the other end of the city? You'd rather not cross the bridge that leads to the other side of the mainland in the north. Because on this side lies the reason why people left the city: Europe's largest steelworks.

Bizarre: A mussel farm in the sea, while behind it, in the Tamburi district, the gigantic steel factory smokes.

Source: IMAGO/Dreamstime

In the 1960s, steel production began here under the name Ilva. Many workers were relocated from the old town to the part of the mainland where the factory was located. What was considered a great hope at the time, because the factory offered thousands of jobs and promised wealth, soon turned out to be one of Italy's biggest polluters. Not only that, but the steelworks also turned out to be a major threat to human life.

More and more people left the old town to move to Tamburi, near the steelworks.

Source: Conny Derdak

Toxic dioxides were released, and particulate matter penetrated homes. Many people in Taranto died (and continue to die) of cancer – including children. Cardiovascular and respiratory diseases increased. Was this all a coincidence? No. The connection between the illnesses and the steelworks is documented by an official study conducted by the Italian Ministry of Health in the early 2000s.

And today? The plant has changed hands several times. The coal and iron ore dumps were covered a few years ago to prevent the toxic dust from blowing into people's homes. The gigantic halls are up to 700 meters long.

The Taranto steelworks is currently under the care of a state commissioner. The future health of Taranto's residents, however, remains to be seen.

The government wants to revitalize the old town with one-euro houses. Whether it will ever regain its former glory is questionable.

Source: Conny Derdak

Meanwhile, the government is trying to lure people back to Taranto. Apparently, this has had little success so far, as so-called one-euro houses have been on offer in the old town since 2021. The fact that it is practically a ghost town is not mentioned.

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