**1. Introduction**

The Tarantula Nebula (alias 30 Doradus) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is the brightest supergiant HII region in the Local Group of galaxies, and serves as a local analogue to metal-poor starburst knots in high redshift galaxies [1]. Its proximity (50 kpc), and high galactic latitude (and hence low extinction) have permitted a myriad of ground-based and space-based surveys across the electromagnetic spectrum, revealing an exceptional population of massive stars ( ≥8*M*), including the dense, young star cluster R136 that is home to some of the most massive stars known. The advent of modern highly multiplexed spectrographs coupled with large ground-based telescopes, has permitted multi-epoch optical spectroscopic surveys of the massive star population of the Tarantula Nebula for the first time. The VLT FLAMES Tarantula Survey, hereafter VFTS [2], has provided the multiplicity, rotational velocities and initial mass function of massive stars. In distant starburst regions it is not possible to resolve individual stars, such that studies rely on techniques based on their integrated properties, which themselves involve assumptions of binarity, stellar rotation and mass function.

The Tarantula Nebula is not the sole example of a supergiant H II region within the Local Group. However, studies of the richest Milky Way star-forming regions are limited by dust extinction (e.g., Westerlund 1, NGC 3603). Counterparts in other Local Group galaxies suffer from a number of limitations, including a relatively modest stellar content (NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud, SMC) or much greater distance (NGC 604 in M 33), such that the Tarantula—whose metallicity is approximately half-solar [3]—serves as the only credible Rosetta Stone for rich extragalactic star-forming regions. This review will provide a brief overview of the structural properties of the Tarantula Nebula, but will largely focus on its massive star content, drawn from results from VFTS and other optical spectroscopic surveys, supplemented by the recent deep Chandra X-ray survey 'Tarantula-Revealed by X-rays' (T-ReX). Finally, comparisons with local and high-redshift star-forming regions will be provided to put the properties of the Tarantula into a broader context. Indeed, the nebular properties of the central NGC 2070 region of the Tarantula are strikingly similar to Green Pea galaxies, exhibiting intense [O III] *λ*4959, 5007 emission, and its star-formation rate is comparable to intense star-forming clumps at high redshift.
