Taranto

Taranto – Pearl with rust

Taranto lies there like a tilted image: on one side, an old town as fragile and beautiful as a forgotten anecdote. On the other side? The ugliest face of modernity: Europe's largest steelmaker, the "Ilva" plant, which spits out more filth than a political debating society.

Oysters grow here. Indeed. In the Gulf of Taranto, where the sea is so blue, it pretends it doesn't know it's been poisoned for a long time. The oysters absorb heavy metals, but at least they supposedly taste "intense." Whatever that means when cadmium is on your plate.

The old town is literally crumbling. Houses are falling into disrepair, people are moving away. And at the same time, millions of tons of steel are being produced, as if someone had decided that soot is the true color of progress.

Taranto is not a place. Taranto is a memorial. To humanity's incredible ability to recognize beauty—and then destroy it with maximum efficiency. Progress, they say. But it's actually just stupidity poured into blast furnaces.