National Archaeological Museum of Taranto

The National Archaeological Museum of Taranto (MArTA) exhibits one of the largest collections of artifacts from the Magna Graecia period, including the famous Gold of Taranto.

Planning your visit

Taranto was Taras, a Spartan colony founded in the eighth century BC and the most powerful Greek city in southern Italy — Magna Graecia at its wealthiest. MArTA holds what that produced, and the Ori di Taranto, the gold, is the reason to come: funerary wreaths of gold oak and myrtle leaves, earrings, diadems and filigree work of a delicacy that few ancient goldsmiths anywhere matched.

Around the gold sit ceramics, sculpture, grave goods and mosaics covering prehistory through the Greek city, Roman occupation, late antiquity and the medieval period, in one of Italy's most important archaeological collections.

Taranto itself is a working port city in Puglia with serious industrial problems and comparatively few tourists, which means the museum is quiet and the town unpolished — this is not the whitewashed Puglia of the trulli and the coast.

The museum was substantially redisplayed and is well presented.

Bookable options include entry tickets and guided museum tours. Current availability is listed below.