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====The rise of Venice====
[[File: Venetian 2.jpg|300px|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 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 became the wealthiest city in Europe and 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.
