Taranto (, also US: ; Italian: [taranto] (listen); Tarantino: Tarde; Latin: Tarentum; early Italian: Tarento; Ancient Greek: ) is a coastal city in Apulia, Southern Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Taranto, serving as an important commercial port as well as the main Italian naval base.Founded by Spartans in the 8th century BC during the period of Greek colonisation, Taranto was among the most important in Magna Graecia, becoming a cultural, economic and military power that gave birth to philosophers, strategists, writers and athletes such as Archytas, Aristoxenus, Livius Andronicus, Heracleides, Iccus, Cleinias, Leonidas, Lysis and Sosibius. By 500 BC, the city was among the largest in the world, with a population estimated up to 300,000 people. The seven-year rule of Archytas marked the apex of its development and recognition of its hegemony over other Greek colonies of southern Italy.

During the Norman period, it became the capital of the Principality of Taranto, which covered almost all of the heel of Apulia.

Taranto is now the third-largest continental city in southern Italy (south of Rome, roughly the southern half of the Italian peninsula), with well-developed steel and iron foundries, oil refineries, chemical works, naval shipyards and food-processing factories. Taranto will host the 2026 Mediterranean Games.

Saracen () was a term used by Christian writers in Europe during the Middle Ages to refer to Muslims, primarily of Arab origin, but also of Turkic and Persian/Iranic origin. The term's meaning evolved during its history of usage; in the early centuries of the Christian era, Greek and Latin writings used the term to refer to the people who lived in the desert areas in and near the Roman province of Arabia Petraea, as well as in Arabia Deserta. During the Early Middle Ages in Europe, the term came to be associated with the tribes of Arabia. The oldest-known source mentioning "Saracens" in relation to Islam dates back to the 7th century; it was found in Doctrina Jacobi, a Christian Greek-language commentary that discussed, among other things, the Muslim conquest of the Levant that occurred after the establishment of the Rashidun Caliphate following the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.By the 12th century, "Saracen" had become synonymous with "Muslim" in Medieval Latin literature. Such an expansion in the meaning of the term had begun centuries earlier among the Byzantine Greeks, as evidenced in documents from the 8th century. In the Western languages before the 16th century, Saracen was commonly used to refer to Arab Muslims, and the terms "Muslim" and "Islam" were generally not used (with a few isolated exceptions). The term gradually became obsolete following the Age of Discovery.