Alessandro Digaetano Photographer

Jonny Caracciolo (left) lives in a difficult area of the district Pope Paul VI, "white houses", on the eastern outskirts of the city. Jonny composed rap music and follows a course of music to escape difficoltö the neighborhood. *** General Caption *** A tough town, Taranto, always has been. A story with roots in Ancient Greece has reached today with the failure of the policy, the notification for the international rating in the city insolvent..The city, which had already its problems, is the disarray, the lack of confidence is ruling: rare successes, very few the chances, so many failures. The sudden industrialization in the 60's with the arrival of Italsider, today Ilva, and the second Navy Italian harbor and workers civil Arsenal, instilled energy into the city that had lived mainly on fishing, shellfish cultivation and agriculture . These were the years of the boom..But Ilva (the "il siderurgico" as it is called) was a thud. Of the thirty thousand workers in the late 60th it has gone to thirteen thousand today, the area is a source of pollution and cancer, the nearby cemetery of the district Tamburi is red by dust. The arsenal of the Mar Piccolo is going to be sold and the workers know that the golden days are long gone, about the future is better not to mention. Yet from the sea come the only news: the new military harbour that the Navy has opened in the Great Sea, and the new commercial port, the Polisettoriale..The Polisettoriale, run by a company in Taiwan, offers a bit of hope to young people whose only prospect seems the Ilva steel factory, emigration, or worse, to fight to finish in the most petty crime. Difficult areas such as Salinella, Taranto old town or the even harder "white houses" in Paolo VI give a sense of abandonment of citizens..The streets of downtown refurbished, or the waterfront graced by the council failed, have drained the coffers of the city. These works are not enough to citizens. A worker farmer of the famous mussels from Taranto say