Museo Nazionale di Taranto (MArTA)

The Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Taranto, universally known by its acronym MArTA, is among the most important museums of ancient Greek and Italic culture in the world, housing a collection of extraordinary richness accumulated from excavations of the ancient city of Taras — the most powerful Greek colonial city of Magna Graecia, founded in 706 BC. Located on Via Cavour in central Taranto, the museum occupies a former 17th-century convent of the Alcantarine order, its austere cloister sheltering collections arranged across three floors. The exhibition is organised chronologically from Neolithic and Bronze Age through Messapian, Greek, and Roman periods. The centrepiece is the remarkable assemblage of ancient Greek gold jewellery — necklaces, diadems, earrings, and brooches worked in filigree and granulation to a standard of craftsmanship rarely surpassed in antiquity — most recovered from aristocratic tombs of the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The rooms collectively known as the Rooms of Gold display over 2,000 pieces and have no equal in Italy for the richness of ancient Greek goldsmithing represented. Beyond the jewellery, the museum holds the Tarentine terracotta figurine collection — thousands of votive statuettes recovered from sanctuaries — and a celebrated collection of Greek and Apulian red-figure pottery spanning the 5th to 3rd centuries BC. The limestone-carved Sarcofago delle Amazzoni from the 4th century BC is a particular highlight of the sculpture galleries, displaying battle reliefs of exceptional quality. MArTA maintains a smartphone audio guide app that significantly enhances the visit by providing object-level interpretation not available from the display labels alone. The museum is closed on Mondays.