  The Tarantula Survey is an ambitious ESO Large Programme that has obtained
multi-epoch spectroscopy of over 1,000 massive stars in the 30 Doradus region
of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Here we introduce the scientific motivations of
the survey and give an overview of the observational sample. Ultimately,
quantitative analysis of every star, paying particular attention to the effects
of rotational mixing and binarity, will be used to address fundamental
questions in both stellar and cluster evolution.
