Taranto

Founded in the eighth century B.C. Taranto was the only Greek colony in a region already settled by the Iapyge people. The city was the protagonist of a long series of internal and external conflicts in the Hellenistic period and until the final Roman conquest. In the Middle Ages, after centuries of Byzantine rule, the principality of Taranto was born (which also included Otranto, Gallipoli and Brindisi) as a result of the contrasts between the heirs of the Norman leader Robert Guiscard. The principality was annexed to the kingdom of Naples only in 1465, under the Aragonese domination. The Aragonese endowed Taranto with solid walls and the castle, which were necessary for the defense from the attacks of the Turks and Venetians. Fought for by the French and the Spanish, the city was conquered by the troops of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the Great Captain, in 1502. During Spanish rule, Taranto underwent a slow but steady decline, repeatedly subjected to attacks by pirates. In 1647, while in Naples the so-called revolt of Masaniello was consumed, Taranto was the protagonist of a popular uprising led by Giandonato Altamura but which was quickly quelled. In the eighteenth century, the city passed, as the kingdom of Naples, first under Austrian rule and then under the Bourbons.