68 km west of Brindisi. The battle of 272 BC gave us the expression ‘Pyrrhic victory’. Latin poets sang of Tarentum’s honey, scallops, olives, wool and purple dyes. Now they call the eastern suburbs Magna Graecia, but anything less reminiscent of the glory that was Greece can hardly be imagined. Over the western approaches, illuminating a well-preserved Roman aqueduct, the names of heavy industry glare in neon: Finsider, Finmare, ltalsider, Fiat, ltalciment – foundries, car factories, cement works, steel strip and rolling mills. The Pope came to say Mass at ltalsider’s stainless steel altar. Whichever way you enter, prepare for traffic jams. Old Town and New meet at an islet with two swing bridges over which all must pass. New Town is garish and ill-paved, Old Town a maze of pendii (alleys) and postierli (little squares) with strange names. Stick Alley and Turtle Square are ankle-deep in fish heads, toddlers crawl like maggots (even in the south of Italy a Taranto fisherman’s philoprogenitive instincts are proverbial), the suffocating tenements prop each other up and to knock at a door is to dislodge a picture of baby Jesus two floors above… but warmth and allegrezza redeem the Old Town, filthy but happy, welcoming to strangers, free of crime. The main street, Via Duomo, wide enough for one vehicle, was once Taranto’s principal thoroughfare along which a dubious nobility rolled in crested carriages.

Taranto boasts two seas. In Mar Piccolo, above the swing bridges, lie coloured fishing boats and the missile destroyers of the Italian Navy, stern to the jetty under Judas trees, a pretty haven for men-o’-war. Near the fishmarket you can eat through a menu of a dozen seafood dishes at any one of a dozen restaurants, while drinking the robust wines of Roccafortezza, 16 per cent alcohol.

Mar Grande is a bay, decorated with black bicycle tyres, the half-submerged rings to which mussels attach themselves. On white sands the tourist cabins proliferate, newly-planted belts of pines hold the beaches together and boat races and regattas are a regular entertainment.

Taranto’s red-letter day is Good Friday, when the hooded penitents sway through Old and New Towns, inching forward at a few steps per hour to the haunting marcia funebre of a silver band. Only in Seville, where this snail-like procession originated, can you see anything similar. Those not involved crowd the restaurants for fish banquets.

There are no outstanding churches, no noted painters, only one worthwhile museum: the Museo Nazionale (www.museotaranto.org/web/index.php?area=1&page=home&id=0&lng=en), exhibiting delicate golden ornaments which Greek colonists’ wives wore in Taranto 2,500 years ago.