Mitiléne

On the eastern shore of Lesbos, Mytilene grew around two harbors once linked by a channel. In antiquity it became the leading city of the island and the home of the poets Sappho and Alcaeus. Its castle rose above the port, guarding a city whose maritime connections reached the nearby Anatolian coast. In 1355 the Byzantine emperor John V granted Lesbos to the Genoese Francesco Gattilusio, who married his sister Maria. The Gattilusi renovated the fortress in 1373 and ruled the island until 1462, when Sultan Mehmed II besieged and captured Mytilene. More than two centuries later, in 1690, Venetian ships defeated Ottoman and Barbary vessels in a battle off the city.