Sanudo

The Sanudo were a Venetian noble family, recorded from the eleventh century, whose most famous branch ruled Aegean islands. After the Fourth Crusade, Marco I Sanudo, nephew of Doge Enrico Dandolo, conquered Naxos with eight galleys in 1207 and subdued most of the Cyclades, founding the Duchy of the Archipelago.

His descendants ruled as vassals of the Latin Empire, the princes of Achaea and the Angevin kings of Naples, losing smaller islands to Byzantine reconquest in the late 1200s. The direct line ended with Duchess Florence in 1371; her successor was overthrown in 1383 by Francesco I Crispo, whose family held the duchy until the Ottoman conquest.

Other branches remained in Venice, producing the geographer and crusading publicist Marino Sanudo Torsello and Marino Sanudo the Younger, whose diaries record Venetian history around 1500.