Impressions

    You remain struck by the radiance of this opulent land, where the time passage has well preserved the great testimonies of a past elsewhere lost.
    Stay intact the bright stone buildings, bold masterpieces of engineering and of culture that blends esoteric mysterious traces with a code, unknown but of which is perceived the handed down sense.
    Blinding lights are reflected, slipped and shined among thin medieval mullioned openings and rosettes, or chased and shattered in the flourished explosions of the Baroque.
    Parks, hills, countrysides and rocky landscapes are so embellished with monuments of art and with spectacular creations of rural culture, in which stand out the fairytale forms of trulli.
    Transparent and rich of colorful beds, seas reflect the white coasts, the imposing walls, the quiet and charming facades of houses and buildings gently drawn up by the time and by man.
    So the sense of strength and solidity is transmitted to the flavors using raw materials of excellent and incomparable quality, from the beautiful expanse of Tavoliere, with its crops ventilated by breezes blowing inviting.
    You can go along paths of history up to the magnificent castles and then arrive in front of historic centers with ancient palaces and majestic cathedrals.
    There is consequently a feeling of completeness, with the possibility to range from the precious and noble culture up to tiny and rewarding pleasures of the daily taste, forgetting that there are other things, knowing that it is possible already enjoy everything, and letting the thoughts dispersed among white cliffs and then reddened by glimpses of a distant sunset.
   

National Archaeological Museum of Taranto

    The museum has one of the most important archaeological collections in Europe, with exhibits that trace the history of local settlements since the Palaeolithic.
    Prehistoric are stone tools and female figurines in bone, coming from the caves of Gargano and Salento, which are considered among the most significant evidence of human presence on Italic territory.
    Are the first evidence of Neolithic pottery ceramic painted with geometric motifs, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic (V-IV millennium BC).
    The Tarantine section offers a rich statuary, starting with splendid examples of archaic age of the marble kore from Montegranaro and the magnificent bronze of Zeus from Ugento.
    Of the centuries IV and V BC are several heads of deities in marble and limestone, with interesting examples of schools of Lysippus and Praxiteles.
    Also Hellenistic is the frieze with a limestone relief depicting probably Alexander the Great on horseback against a succumbing warrior.
    Of great importance is the core of ceramics, mainly from the excavations of the necropolis of Taranto, which presents Protocorinthian pottery of century VII BC, and later Attic black-figure pottery of the century VI BC; then the beautiful Apulian vases of local workshops of classic period, sometimes depicting farcical characters.
    Hellenistic are also the unmistakable ceramics in style of Gnathia (black paint with clear shapes and colors of different gradation from red to yellow); lastly are following the Aretine ceramics in red coral of Roman period.
    Famous is the collection of goldsmith, with precious golds of Peucezia, from Ruvo di Puglia, of century VI BC, and Tarantine products of century BC IV, with rings and earrings of elaborate workmanship, as well as the famous bronze nutcracker with two movable forearms, from excavations of the rich necropolis in the city.
    Of great value are also funeral wreaths and gold tiaras of centuries III-II BC, with funerary equipment found at the tomb of Golds of Canosa, also including a scepter in gold foil, a silver case for mirror and two jewelry casket.
    Very interesting are also the finds of the so-called "Tomb of the Athlete", in which were found the remains of a "pentathlete" of century V BC, in fairly good condition, buried within a sarcophagus, with his "Panathenaic amphorae" (trophies depicting the victories of man to the famous Greek competitions).