It is called "the city of the two seas" Taranto, bathed by the Great and the Small Sea, is a condensed history between noble palaces and underground jewels... #tuttitaly
In 706 BC stands on a peninsula between two Seas (Mar Grande and Mar Piccolo), the ancient city of Taranto. Its foundation coincides with the landing of a colony of refugees from Sparta.
At that time, Taranto was an island that housed a small village of Iapigians (an ancient Indo-European population from Illyria).
It was the Partheni (refugees from Sparta) who transformed that simple village into an urban center. This was then razed to the ground by the Saracens, and in 927, the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus Phocas brought in architects from Greece to rebuild it.
Today we can admire the works of these architects: typical houses and very narrow alleys in which you can pass no more than one at a time.
The alleys were reasoned in this way so that the inhabitants could pour boiling oil over them to defend themselves.
After the reconstruction, many of those Greek architects remained to live in Taranto. Since then, a mixed language began to be spoken in the medieval city. Even today, in the dialectal language, there are traces of words of Greek origin.
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