Candia

The most dangerous revolt, however, came from the Venetians themselves. In 1363, angered by a new tax to repair Candia's harbour, the Venetian lords of Crete drove out the governor and proclaimed a republic under Saint Titus, the island's patron; Venice retook the city the next spring and executed the ringleaders. The long peace that followed filled Candia with icon painters, whose workshops blended Byzantine and Italian styles into the Cretan school that would produce El Greco.

After 1453 Crete was Venice's frontier against the Ottomans, and once Cyprus fell in 1571 it was the republic's last great possession in the eastern Mediterranean. The Ottomans landed in 1645 and three years later laid siege to Candia. Supplied by sea and reinforced by volunteers from across Christian Europe, the city held out for twenty-one years, until in 1669 its garrison surrendered to Köprülüzade Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, leaving Venice only a few island forts off the Cretan coast.