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[[File: Venetian 2.jpg|200px300px|thumb|left|Painting of the Battle of Lepanto]]During the various cataclysms that engulfed northern Italy in the centuries after the fall of Rome, many refugees fled to a lagoon in the Adriatic Sea, sometime in the 5th century AD .<ref>Norwich, John Julius. A History of Venice (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1982), p 13</ref>. Over time, several settlements developed, on a number of some islands and they merged to become a single city, which came to be known as Venice. It became a dependency of Byzantium in the 6th century AD <ref>Norwich, p 14</ref>. The relationship with the successor state of the Roman Empire allowed Venice to become a great trading and maritime power by the 11th. century AD.  The city which was a Republic benefitted enormously from its role in the Crusades , and after several wars with other Italian maritime powers such as Genoa, it came to dominate the trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. The ‘Serene Republic’ as it was known was governed by a Doge who was elected by the citizen body .<ref>Norwich, p 17</ref>. Venice was able to become became the richest wealthiest city in Europe and had maintained the largest navy in the Mediterranean by 1200. It was very democratic for the time and its institutions and laws were by contemporary standards very equitable.  Relations between Venice and Byzantium deteriorated in the 12th century. The ‘Massacre of the Latins’, when the Emperor Andronicus incited the populace of Byzantium to kill Italians in the city, embittered relations between the Italian maritime republic and the Greek Orthodox Empire .<ref> Ferraro, Joanne M. Venice: History of the Floating City (Cambridge University Press; 2012), p 145</ref>.  The Fourth Crusade was another expedition by Christians to reclaim the Holy City of Jerusalem that was occupied by the Muslims. Venice was contracted by the Crusaders to ferry them to the Near East. However, they could not afford to pay for their passage. The Doge at the time reached an agreement with the Crusaders to attack Byzantium to pay for their transport to the Holy Land. In 1204 the Venetians and the Crusaders attacked and seized the city and partitioned the Byzantium Empire, among themselves. This result greatly increased the power of the Republic.  The Venetians by 1400 had established a maritime Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the Adriatic. The emergence of the Ottoman Turks prevented their further expansion in the Levant. The city-state abandoned its long-established policy and began to expand on mainland Italy . <ref>Herne, Judith. The History of Byzantium (London, Knopf, 1995), p 101-110</ref>. This involved it in wars against an alliance of Italian principalities and city-states. Venice was able to secure much of the rich fertile lands of north-east Italy. However, in 1453 Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Turks and this changed the geopolitical situation in the Mediterranean.  Venetians were constantly always on the defensive after 1453 , and they became embroiled in many brutal wars with the Ottomans. This is commonly seen as the start of Ottoman and signaled the decline of the city-state. From the late fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century the Hapsburgs and the French monarchs battled for control of the Italian peninsula. Venice allied with France and the city paid dearly for this alliance. It was attacked by an alliance A coalition of Italian cities attacked Venice and was weakened it considerably weakened as a result.  The 16th century was the Age of Exploration , and European kingdoms such as Portugal create created trans-Oceanic trade routes .<ref>Norwich, p P 134</ref>. This meant that the These trade routes that were more efficient and profitable than those controlled by Venice. By the Italian citymid-state were not as lucrative. The best example of this was the spice tradesixteenth, the Portuguese effectively excluded the Venetians from this trade by the mid-sixteenth century. Then there were several Venice faced a series of disastrous outbreaks of bubonic plague that dramatically reduced the decimated its population.  However, Venice remained an important essential power in the region , and it continued to fight many wars against the Ottomans and was even central to the Christian victory at Lepanto (1571). Moreover, while the city went into economic decline , it remained a wealthy state. The Venetians, natural entrepreneurs , began to find other markets , and the city became a major significant exporter of agricultural products and they also developed new industries markets such as the glass industry. By 1600, the city was past its zenith, but it was still wealthy and great remained a formidable maritime power.