Ancona

That freedom lapsed only once. In 1348, with the Black Death in the streets and much of the town burned, the Malatesta lords of Rimini seized Ancona; seven years later Cardinal Albornoz drove them out for the pope and built a great fortress in the city, which the Anconitans besieged and tore down in 1383. Allied with Ragusa across the sea, the republic kept a trade route to Constantinople that bypassed Venice, and in 1464 Pope Pius II came here to launch a crusade against the Ottomans, only to die in the city before the fleet could sail. In the end Ancona lost its liberty by a trick. Claiming that a Turkish attack was imminent, Clement VII had Antonio da Sangallo the Younger build a citadel on a hill over the town, and on 19 September 1532, with its guns trained on the streets, Ancona gave up its independence without a fight.

Under the popes the port stayed open to outsiders. Greek merchants who had fled the Ottoman advance formed its largest foreign community, and the Jews, confined to a ghetto from 1556, were allowed to stay in 1569 when Pius V expelled them from every other city of the Papal States except Rome and Avignon. In 1733 Clement XII lengthened the quay and had Luigi Vanvitelli build the Lazzaretto, a quarantine station on a pentagonal island in the harbor.