The Maritime Republic of Genoa, 1100–1380 | Calm Bedtime History

It is April of the year 1100. In the harbour of Genoa, forty galleys ride at anchor beneath the steep limestone hills. Sailors unload bales of Syrian cotton and jars of Palestinian wine, the first fruits of a treaty struck with Bohemond of Antioch during the recent crusade. The city is barely two miles long, pressed between the mountains and the Ligurian Sea, yet its merchants have already begun to build something that will outlast any cathedral wall. You are in the harbour of Genoa, at the beginning of three centuries that will carry these ships to the Black Sea, to the alum mines of Phocaea, and eventually to the fatal waters off Chioggia.