About this journey

Bari Centrale station, first built in 1864 and expanded to 16 platforms across subsequent decades, stands as one of Puglia's principal rail hubs, serving both FS and FSE services. From here the Bari–Taranto railway heads south-west, threading through the interior of the Murge plateau toward the Ionian coast.

Taranto station, which opened on 15 September 1868 with the inauguration of the Gioia del Colle–Taranto section of the Bari–Taranto railway, occupies a historically significant position in the Italian south. For much of the nineteenth century, Taranto functioned as a key junction for freight moving northward from Calabria and Sicily, though that role diminished after traffic was diverted via Salerno and Naples. The establishment of the Ferrovie del Sud Est in 1931 later brought renewed regional connectivity through Martina Franca. Today the station forms a junction between three main lines — from Bari, Brindisi, and Reggio di Calabria — and its passenger building retains a two-storey central structure with a clock tower and two lateral wings. The journey on the FS ETR 324 thus moves between two very different railway characters: Bari's sprawling multi-platform terminus and Taranto's historically layered junction station close to the channel dividing the Mar Grande from the Mar Piccolo.