The new Theatre Fusco is one of the jewels of the central part of the Village Jonico.

The “Fusco”, owned by the municipal administration, is home to about 500 people and is equipped with the most modern technology in terms of sound and design.

The history of cinema-teatro Fusco Taranto – initially only movie theater – has its origins in 1907, the year in which it was inaugurated with its headquarters in via Ciro Giovinazzi, where it is still situated today.

This was a decade marked by the “pioneers” and, without a doubt, the entrepreneur tarantino Gennaro Fusco, in his field, he was one of them, he was able to give hype to his name, even in a european context.

It was one of the first “cinema halls” of Italy, entirely made of wood: so beautiful, so luxurious, but also very vulnerable to fire.

Considering the numerous accidents that occurred in that period to other cinemas of the city, in 1927, the family Fusco decided to demolish the entire wooden structure and reconstruct an entirely in masonry.

The new structure was inaugurated at the end of 1928, when, with his new statement art deco took its final name of “Cinema-teatro Fusco”.

Throughout the next decade, the programming and the movie theatre was of the highest level: it is still possible to admire the records compiled by the then owners, and preserved with great care by the heirs. But the war came, and the winds of war, inevitably, could have received the cultural activities of the cinema-teatro Fusco and the entire city of Taranto.

It was the era of the film of fascist propaganda, and cinema of the white telephones, of the carefree comedies, Italian, Hungarian, and German, all of them made at low cost and strongly supported by the schemes.
The war had to be kept as much as possible far away, and the population had to perceive the devastating truth. But in reality it was not so, and still today is a great effect to look at the pictures of the Fusco dressed up to party with the flags of the Wehrmacht.

In the frantic year 1943, the building was occupied by the troops, which soon transformed into a recreation area between the film and the meetings of the Noble Art.

The post-war years were years of glory to the cinema-teatro Fusco: not only great films, but on the stage were the biggest companies in the Italian theatre as has already occurred at the beginning of the century.

The advent of television in 1954, he set a terrible setback that led to a crisis in slow and unstoppable cinemas and theatres in italy. Even the Fusco was free.

Programming theater slowly disappeared, again leaving the place only of film.

In the forty years that followed, a few were the ascents significant: those of the great classics of Cinecittà, the return of the american cinema of the late sixties, the noir and the Italian western, and the big american productions in the eighties.

Then, in 2004, the closing.

In December 2018, after 14 long years of trials and vicissitudes, the Cinema Teatro Fusco is purchased from the Town of Taranto, becoming the public. December 30, 2019, the Teatro Fusco was opened by Administration Melucci, becoming the first municipal theater of the city's history.