Pátra

Patras stands at the foot of Mount Panachaikon, looking across the gulf that bears its name. Its harbour connects the northern Morea with the Ionian Sea, while a castle overlooks the town. In Roman times Patras was a flourishing city; Christian tradition holds that the apostle Andrew was martyred here. After the Fourth Crusade it became the seat of a Latin archbishop and a barony of the Frankish Principality of Achaea.

The Despotate of the Morea recovered Patras in 1430, but Sultan Mehmed II took it in 1458. The Ottomans called it Baliabadra, or Old Patras, to distinguish it from another town of the same name. Venetian and Genoese attacks disturbed the port, and Venice held it during the Morean War and its aftermath, from 1687 to 1715. In 1770 the city suffered severely when Ottoman forces and their allies suppressed the revolt encouraged by the Russian Orlov expedition. A Russian and Ottoman naval battle followed off its coast in 1772.