Popular tourist attractions include the archaeological sites of the Minoan civilisation, the Venetian old city and port of Chania, the Venetian castle at Rethymno, the gorge of Samaria, the islands of Chrysi, Elafonisi, Gramvousa, and Spinalonga and the Palm Beach of Vai, which is the largest natural palm forest in Europe.

Venice (, Venetian: Venexia ; () is a city in northeast Italy sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges.

Other islands of the Venetian Lagoon do not form part of any of the sestieri, having historically enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy.

They flee to small islands in the Venetian Lagoon.

The coasts of the Adriatic Sea are characterized by the Venetian Lagoon, a flat terrain with ponds, marshes and islands.

As the barbarians were interested in the wealth of the mainland, part of the Venetian population sought refuge on some of the isolated and unoccupied islands in the lagoon, from which the city of Venetiae or Venice was born.

They were refugees from former Byzantine or Venetian territories that were occupied by the Ottomans in the late 15th and 16th c. The first Greek community was established in Ancona early in the 16th c. Natalucci, the 17th c. historian of the city, notes the existence of 200 Greek families in Ancona at the opening of the 16th c. Most of them came from northwestern Greece, i. e. the Ionian islands and Epirus.

In the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, with a Latin Emperor under the influence of the Venetians established at Constantinople, the Venetian Marco Sanudo conquered the island and soon captured the rest of the islands of the Cyclades, establishing himself as Duke of Naxia, or Duke of the Archipelago.

Twenty-one dukes in two dynasties ruled the Archipelago, until 1566 ; Venetian rule continued in scattered islands of the Aegean until 1714.

A peace treaty was signed between Venice and the Ottoman Empire in October 1540, under which the Turks took control of the Venetian possessions in the Morea and in Dalmatia and of the formerly Venetian islands in the Aegean, Ionian and eastern Adriatic Seas.

Lands ceded included the Austrian Netherlands ( now Belgium ) and certain islands in the Mediterranean, including Corfu and other Venetian islands in the Adriatic Sea.

Paros became subject to the Duchy of the Archipelago, a fiefdom made up of various Aegean islands ruled by a Venetian duke as nominal vassal of a succession of crusader states.

* The United States of the Ionian Islands were a federal Septinsular Republic of seven formerly Venetian ( see Provveditore ) Ionian islands ( Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Santa Maura, Ithaca, Cerigo and Paxos ), officially under joint protectorate of the Allied Christian Powers, de facto a UK amical protectorate from 1815 to 1864.

Burano is an island in the Venetian Lagoon, northern Italy ; like Venice itself, it could more correctly be called an archipelago of four islands linked by bridges.

Aerial view of the Venetian Lagoon, showing many of the islands including Venice itself, center rear, with the bridge to the mainland

San Cristoforo was selected to become a cemetery in 1807, designed by Gian Antonio Selva, when under French occupation it was decreed that burial on the mainland ( or on the main Venetian islands ) was unsanitary.

Murano is a series of islands linked by bridges in the Venetian Lagoon, northern Italy.

The exarchate, as well as the Duchy of Rome, was ravaged and Ravenna fell to the Lombards ; Eutychius was forced to go to the Venetian islands.

From 1204, the Republic of Venice controlled Corfu and slowly all the Ionian islands fell under Venetian rule.

From then on Zakynthos remained an overseas colony of the Venetian Republic until its very end in 1797, following the fate of the Ionian islands, completed by the capture of Cephalonia in 1500 and Lefkas in 1684 from the Turks.

When Napoleon put an end to the Venetian Republic in 1797, Cythera was among the islands incorporated in that most distant départment of France, called Mer-Égée.

It did not hold the islands of the Aegean Sea, which were Venetian territories, but exercised influence over the Latin Lordship of Negroponte.

As we find out at the end, it is not the stool ( symbolizing Doris, therefore the English ) that he is punishing but the piece of Venetian blind.

Sometime between 1763 and 1764 Salieri suffered the death of both parents and was briefly taken in by an anonymous brother, a monk in Padua, and then for unknown reasons in 1765 or 1766 he became the ward of a Venetian nobleman named Giovanni Mocenigo ( which Giovanni is at this time unknown ), a member of the powerful and well connected Mocenigo family.

* 1522 – Combined forces of Spain and the Papal States defeat a French and Venetian army at the Battle of Bicocca.

The Catalan Company seized control of Athens, and with it Aegina, in 1317, and in 1425 the island came under Venetian control, when Alioto Caopena, at that time ruler of Aegina, placed himself with treaty under the Republic's protection in order to escape the danger of a Turkish raid.

The original Arabic name of Crete was Iqrīṭiš ( < ( της ) Κρήτης ), but after the Emirate of Crete's establishment of its new capital at ربض الخندق Rabḍ al-ḫandaq ( modern Iraklion ), both the city and the island became known as Χάνδαξ ( Khandhax ) or Χάνδακας ( Khandhakas ), which gave Latin and Venetian Candia, from which French Candie and English Candy or Candia.

* The Venetian fort and leper colony at Spinalonga opposite the beach and shallow waters of Elounda ( Ag.

It was at this time that he developed his Empire style, notable for its use of warm Venetian colours.

HP DISCOVER 2011 Americas is slated for June 6 – 10, in Las Vegas at the Venetian / Palazzo.

The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ( Late Middle Ages ) gave its dialect weight, though the Venetian language remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian ( or Genoese ) remained in use in maritime trade alongside the Mediterranean.

Francesco, in his capacity of Captain General of the Venetian armies, was often required to go to Venice for conferences which left Isabella in Mantua on her own at La Reggia the ancient palace which was the family seat of the Gonzagas.

For ten years the concerts were organized by Mrs. Theresa Cornelys, a retired Venetian opera singer who owned a concert hall at Carlisle House in Soho Square, then the height of fashionable events.

Genoese admiral Lamba D ' Oria overwhelmed a Venetian fleet at the Battle of Curzola near the island of Korčula, and Polo was taken prisoner.

Due to the Venetian law stating that the day ends at sunset, the exact date of Marco Polo's death cannot be determined, but it was between the sunsets of January 8 and 9, 1324.

However, the crusading army melted away at Ancona for want of transport, and when at last the Venetian fleet arrived, the dying Pope could only view it from a window.

Many of the composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the papal chapel, though they worked at several churches ; stylistically they are often contrasted with the Venetian School of composers, a concurrent movement which was much more progressive.

In 1545, at Konya, he married Nurbanu Sultan, originally named Cecilia Venier-Baffo, a Venetian noblewoman, and mother of Murad III, who later became the first Valide Sultan who acted as co-regent with the sultan in the Sultanate of Women.

New ports were built, including those at Malamocco and Torcello in the Venetian lagoon.

Its strategic position at the head of the Adriatic made Venetian naval and commercial power almost invulnerable.

" The Venetian ambassador who related this of him was not unbiased, nor was he in Rome at the time ; nevertheless the phrase illustrates fairly the Pope's culture-loving nature and the humanistic interests that characterized him.

The Venetian ambassador Gradenigo estimated the paying number of offices on Leo's death at 2, 150, with a capital value of nearly 3, 000, 000 ducats and a yearly income of 328, 000 ducats.

Tyrolean forces quickly seized silver mines in the Valsugana valley owned by Venice, and in April 1487 Sigismund outraged Venice further when he imprisoned 130 Venetian merchants traveling to the fair at Bozen ( modern Bolzano ) and confiscated their goods.

The Venetian diarist Marino Sanuto, who saw Anne when Henry VIII met Francis I at Calais in October 1532, described her as " not one of the handsomest women in the world ; she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised ... eyes, which are black and beautiful ".