Since the area has been referred to as the Balkans, notable conflicts have included the following

After the devastating 1354 earthquake, the Greek city of Gallipoli was almost abandoned, but swiftly reoccupied by Turks from Anatolia, the Asiatic side of the straits, making Gallipoli the first Ottoman position in Europe, and the staging area for their expansion across the Balkans.

It is impossible to delineate Illyrian tribes from Paleo-Balkans in a strict linguistic sense, but areas classically included under " Illyrian " for the Balkans Iron Age include the area of the Danube, Sava, and Morava rivers to the Adriatic Sea and the Shar Mountains.

Strmiska notes that Hecate, conflated with the figure of Diana, appears in late antiquity and in the early medieval period as part of an " emerging legend complex " associated with gatherings of women, the moon, and witchcraft that eventually became established " in the area of Northern Italy, southern Germany, and the western Balkans.

Among the earliest cultural complexes of this area are included the Sesklo culture in Thessaly, which later expanded in the Balkans giving Starčevo-Körös ( Cris ), Linearbandkeramik, and Vinča.

According to the 2011 census the municipality of Thessaloniki today has a population of 322, 240, while the Thessaloniki Urban Area ( the contiguous built up area forming the " City of Thessaloniki ") has a population of 790, 824 ; making it the fifth largest and most populated city in the Balkans and the second most populated city that is not a capital.

With the decreasing importance of the Adriatic corridor as a smuggling canal ( thanks to the normalization of the Balkans area ) and a series of successful police and judicial operations against it in recent years the Sacra Corona Unita has been reduced to a fraction of its former power, which peaked around the mid-1990s.

In spite of these reverses, Irene's military efforts met with some success: in 782 her favoured courtier Staurakios subdued the Slavs of the Balkans and laid the foundations of Byzantine expansion and re-Hellenization in the area.

* the Standard Average European area, comprising Romance, Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages, the languages of the Balkans, and western Uralic languages

Roman Roads in MontenegroBefore the arrival of the Slavonic peoples in the Balkans during the 6th century AD, the area now known as Montenegro was inhabited principally by the Illyrians.

This area extends over most of the Balkans region, and the Getae north of the Danube as far as beyond the Bug.

The ACI operated in the Balkans and the ANR operated in northern Italy and the area around the Baltic Sea.

Operation Zeppelin was the Mediterranean equivalent of Fortitude, intended to tie down German forces in the area by threatening landings in the Balkans, particularly Crete or Romania.

The revolt had weakened Byzantine defenses in the Balkans and in 1048 the area was raided by the Pechenegs, who continued to plunder it for the next five years.

However, a Yugoslavian state was created in order to bar Italian influence and expansion on the Balkans, and thus Italy was quite isolated in this area.

The Paleo-Balkan tribes of Dacians and Thracians emerged in the area in the 2nd millennia BC, with the Celtic Scordisci raiding the Balkans in the 3rd century BC.

Rumelia ( English: Roumelia ; Turkish: Rumeli ; Albanian: Rumelia ;, Romylía, or Ρούμελη, Roúmeli ; Bosnian, Serbian and ;, Rumeliya ) was a historical term describing the area now referred to as the Balkans or the Balkan Peninsula when it was occupied by the Ottoman Empire.

Neum is a town of 2, 000 citizens ( 1991 census ) and the area around the city is rich with historical and archeological remains of the Illyrians, a people who lived in the Balkans for many thousands of years.

Zbigniew Gołąb considers that the hydronyms of the Vistula and Odra river basins had a North-West Indo-European character with close affinities to the Italo-Celtic branch, but different from the Germanic branch, and show resemblances to those attested in the area of the Adriatic Veneti ( in Northeastern Italy ) as well as those attested in the Western Balkans that are attributed to Illyrians, which suggests points to a possible connection between these ancient Indo-European peoples.

Russian chancellor Gorchakov said of the subsequent Treaty of Berlin “ I consider the Berlin Treaty the darkest page in my life .” The Russian people were by and large furious over the European repudiation of their political gains, and though there was some thought that this represented only a minor stumble on the road to Russian hegemony in the Balkans, it in fact gave Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia over to Austria ’ s sphere of influence, essentially removing all Russian influence from the area.

In an order sent in multiple copies to authorities throughout the European provinces in 1666 a devşirme recruitment target of between 300 and 320 was set for an area covering the whole of the central and western Balkans.

The middle of the bridge, called " the kapia "— the gate, is wider, and it quickly becomes a popular meeting place for people from Višegrad and the surrounding area in a relaxed mood which is still typical of present-day Turkey and most of the Balkans.

According to one opinion, Neolithic cultures of the Balkans were of non-Indo-European origin and Indo-European peoples ( originating from eastern Europe ) did not settle in this area before the Eneolithic period.

From 2000-2009 Evans was President and CEO of the Brussels-based conflict prevention and resolution organisation, the International Crisis Group, which during his tenure grew in staff from 25 to over 130, in budget from $ US2 million to over $ 15 million, and in operating area from a handful of countries in the Balkans and Central Africa to over 60 across four continents, and published 784 worldwide-distributed reports.

The largest glacial lake of the Balkans, Smradlivo ezero (" Stinky Lake ") with an area of 21. 2 km² is located in Central Rila, as well as the peaks Kanarata, Cherna polyana, Malak Skakavets and Golyam Skakavets, Rilets.

* 1346 – Dušan the Mighty is proclaimed Emperor, with the Serbian Empire occupying much of the Balkans.

* 193 – Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum ( in the Balkans ).

Bosnia and Herzegovina is located in Southeastern Europe, in the western Balkans.

The brown bear's principal range includes parts of Russia, the United States ( mostly in Alaska ), Canada, the Carpathian region ( especially Romania, but also Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland and so on ), the Balkans, Sweden and Finland, where it is the national animal.

It is possible that Bonaparte envisaged Aboukir Bay as a temporary anchorage: on 27 July he expressed the expectation that Brueys had already transferred his ships to Alexandria and three days later issued orders for the fleet to make for Corfu in preparation for naval operations against the Ottoman territories in the Balkans, although the courier carrying the instructions was intercepted and killed by Bedouin partisans.

The Balkans ( turkish balkan = „ mountains or forrest mountains “), often referred to as the Balkan Peninsula, and recently also as " Southeast Europe ", although none of the three are coterminous, is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe.

If Diocletian ever did enter Rome shortly after his accession, he did not stay long ; he is attested back in the Balkans by 2 November 285, on campaign against the Sarmatians.

Greek cuisine () is a Mediterranean cuisine, sharing characteristics with the cuisines of Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, and the Levant.

* 1878 – League of Prizren is established, to oppose the decisions of the Congress of Berlin and the Treaty of San Stephano, as a consequence of which the Albanian lands in Balkans were being partitioned and given to the neighbor states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece.

* None of the existing theories of the origin of Hitto-Luwian peoples and their migration to Anatolia ( either from the Balkans or from the Caucasus ) is related to Crete.

The Balkans is a peninsula including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and the European part of Turkey.

It is a matter of debate whether Proto-Romanian developed among Romanized people that were left behind in Dacia by the Roman withdrawal or among Latin-speakers in the Balkans South of the Danube.

It is also the crossing point for many international routes like E40 connecting Calais, Brussels, Cologne, Dresden, Wrocław, Kraków and Kiev and E75 from Scandinavia to the Balkans.

Skopje is located in the Skopje statistical region of northern Macedonia, in the centre of the Balkans, approximately halfway between Belgrade and Athens.

A dayereh ( or doyra, dojra, dajre, doira, daire ) is a medium-sized frame drum with jingles used to accompany both popular and classical music in Iran ( Persia ), the Balkans, and many central Asian countries such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish proper, spoken mainly in Anatolia and the Balkans, the speakers of which account for about 40 % of all Turkic speakers.

Turkey is situated in Anatolia and the Balkans, bordering the Black Sea, between Bulgaria and Georgia, and bordering the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, between Greece and Syria.

While even folkloric vampires of the Balkans and Eastern Europe had a wide range of appearance ranging from nearly human to bloated rotting corpses, it was interpretation of the vampire by the Christian Church and the success of vampire literature, namely John Polidori's 1819 novella The Vampyre that established the archetype of charismatic and sophisticated vampire ; it is arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century, inspiring such works as Varney the Vampire and eventually Dracula.

* Glycerius is exiled to Dalmatia ( Balkans ) and becomes bishop of Salona.

* The Byzantine city of Justiniana Prima is founded and becomes later an bishop's seat of the Central Balkans.

* Montenegro, the last free monarchy in the Balkans, is annexed by the Ottoman Empire as part of the sanjak of Shkodër.

The city's main university, Aristotle University, is the largest in Greece and the Balkans.

Modern knowledge of Bosnia in the western Balkans during the Dark Ages is patchy.