Ioannina

After Serbian rule ended in 1356, the citizens of Ioannina learned to choose their own masters. They endured the hated Thomas Preljubović until his murder in 1384, then offered the city to Esau de' Buondelmonti, and on Esau's death in 1411 invited in Carlo I Tocco, count palatine of Cephalonia, who made Ioannina his summer capital. In 1430 an Ottoman army fresh from the capture of Thessalonica appeared before the walls, and the city surrendered when Sinan Pasha promised to respect its autonomy.

That bargain held until 1611, when a failed peasant revolt led by Dionysius the Philosopher cost the Christians their privileges and their homes in the castle, and the School of the Despots, open since 1204, was closed. The city recovered through its merchants, who founded trading and banking houses in Venice and Livorno, endowed schools at home and paid for Venetian presses whose books reached the Greek lands through Ioannina. In 1788 Ali Pasha made it the seat of a domain reaching from Thessaly to southern Albania, and in 1820 the sultan's armies sent against him burned most of the city.