The Landscape of Medieval Greece 341
The westerners placed particular importance on the construction and main-
tenance of harbours able to accommodate large vessels involved in inter-
national trade and to provide for their procurement and passage.44 Towns
were founded or re-founded near ports (Candia, Canea, Glarenza, Modon
and Coron, Chalkis/Negroponte, Nauplion and Naxos), which were linked
into a complex network of sea routes of utmost importance for international
trade with western Europe with the burden of maintaining or constructing
a war fleet in their arsenals. As important centres for international and local
trade these cities became poles of attraction for merchants and profession-
als of Venetian or other Italian origin. In line with all major harbours of the
2006); Klaus W. Rainer and Ulrich Kleimueller, Monemvasia, the Town and its History
(Athens, 1983).
44 Ruthi Gertwagen, “Harbours and Facilities along the Eastern Mediterranean Sea Lanes to
Outremer,” in Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, ed. John H. Pryor (Aldershot,
2006), pp. 95–118; idem, “The Concept of Ports in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean:
Construction and Maintenance on Crete to the End of the Fifteenth Century,” International
Journal of Maritime History 12 (2000), 177–241; and idem, “The Island of Corfu in Venetian
Policy in the Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries,” International Journal of Maritime
History 19 (2007), 181–210.
figure 10.2 Mistra, view of settlement.
PHOTO: AGNIESZKA SZYMANSKA