Durrës

The struggle went on through the 14th century. In 1337 the city belonged to the Serbs, and after Tsar Dušan's death in 1355 the Albanian Thopia family fought a band of Navarrese mercenaries for it, until in 1392 Venice took Durrës from them and made it a bastion of its Albanian coast. The Venetian walls held off Mehmed II in 1466, but in 1501 the city fell to the Ottomans.

The Ottomans valued little here but the castle and the salt pans. Most of the townspeople moved inland, and when the traveller Evliya Çelebi passed through around 1670 he counted only some 150 houses. Salt exports revived the port late in the 17th century, and by 1700 France, England, the Netherlands and Austria kept consuls here, while Venetian buyers shipped out its grain and olive oil.