The emergence of the large landed estates was consolidated in the 1700s. Productive organization of the countryside, the spreading of the suburbs, spatial reorganization and the artistic renewal of the city, where unearned incomes derived from local commerce and usury were clearly invested, emphasized a process that had begun in the 1600s.
The tax assessment of 1746 indicate that 20% of the active population constituted ‘people of sea’. The rest of the population were poor fishermen living in the Turipenna quarter, the most populous of the city, in whose small alleys ancient local activities were carried out, from textile manufacture, to culture of byssus ropes and the manufacture of fish pots.
While a quarter of the population was occupied in fishing, for many this was more subsistence than an industry. Out of 700 ‘people of sea’, only 3 owned a boat, 178 were sailors of fishing boats and 493 were generically fishermen engaged on the pit or the channel and in the rearing of mussels and oysters in the numerous fish farms that belonged to the Archbishop, the Church, the convents and federal property. The fish farms producing huge incomes and assuring a good level of production in barrels of oysters and mussels were for export rather than local consumption.
In particular, Mar Piccolo was organized into lotteries called ‘piscarie’, which were more productive than other areas of the gulf thanks to the particular climatic and hydro-geological conditions.
Taranto seen by Chastelet
in a print published within the Sain-Non (1781-1786)
H. Swinburne,Taranto from Mar Piccolo
(1770-1780)