From 1489 to 1571, the Republic of Venice held Cyprus in its iron grip — not as a benevolent steward, but as a calculating merchant empire.
The Greek population, long accustomed to foreign dominion, found little relief under Venetian rule.
Their new overlords, fluent in commerce but deaf to local grievances, governed with cold detachment, viewing the island not as a homeland but as a strategic asset.
Cyprus, perched along the arteries of East-West trade, was a jewel in Venice’s maritime crown. It served as a vital node on the Silk Route and a bulwark against the swelling tide of Ottoman expansion. The Venetians, ever pragmatic, fortified Nicosia and Famagusta with massive stone bastions, anticipating the inevitable clash with Suleiman’s successors.
Their foresight proved grimly accurate. In 1570, the Ottoman war machine descended upon Nicosia. The city fell swiftly, its defenders butchered, its governor decapitated. His severed head was dispatched to Famagusta — a macabre herald of what was to come.
Marcantonio Bragadino, the Venetian captain-general, braced for siege. With 8,000 men and dwindling supplies, he faced an Ottoman force numbering over 200,000, supported by 2,000 cannon and a fleet that choked Famagusta Bay. For nearly a year, the defenders held firm, encircled and outgunned, their resolve etched into the crumbling walls.
When the city finally capitulated, Bragadino was promised safe conduct. Instead, he was subjected to a grotesque spectacle of vengeance. His ears and nose were severed, and in a final act of barbarity, he was flayed alive in the public square — a warning to all who dared defy the Sultan’s will.
With the fall of Famagusta, the curtain closed on Western dominion in the Levant. Cyprus, once a Christian outpost and Venetian stronghold, was absorbed into the Ottoman sphere, and would remain so for the next three centuries.
