The Tarantula Survey is an ambitious ESO Large Programme that has obtained multi-epoch spectroscopy of over 1000 massive stars in the 30 Doradus region in 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.
