Frankokratia in the context of "Old Navarino castle"

The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, beginning in Minoan and later in Mycenaean Greece, continuing most notably into Classical Greece, while influencing the Roman Empire and its successor the Byzantine Empire. Other cultures and states such as the Frankish states, the Ottoman Empire, the Venetian Republic and Bavarian and Danish monarchies have also left their influence on modern Greek culture. Also they believed in greek mythology

Modern democracies owe a debt to Greek beliefs in government by the people, trial by jury, and equality under the law. The ancient Greeks pioneered in many fields that rely on systematic thought, including biology, geometry, history, philosophy, and physics. They introduced important literary forms as epic and lyric poetry, history, tragedy, and comedy. In their pursuit of order and proportion, the Greeks created an ideal of beauty that strongly influenced Western art.

Pylos (UK: /ˈpaɪlɒs/, US: /-loʊs/; Greek: Πύλος), historically also known as Navarino, is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it has been part of the municipality Pylos-Nestoras, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It was the capital of the former Pylia Province. It is the main harbour on the Bay of Navarino. Nearby villages include Gialova, Pyla, Elaiofyto, Schinolakka, and Palaionero. The town of Pylos has 2,568 inhabitants, the municipal unit of Pylos 4,559 (2021). The municipal unit has an area of 143.911 km.

Pylos has been inhabited since Neolithic times. It was a significant kingdom in Mycenaean Greece, with the remains of the so-called "Palace of Nestor" excavated nearby, named after Nestor, the king of Pylos in Homer's Iliad. In Classical times, the site was uninhabited, but became the site of the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC, during the Peloponnesian War. After that, Pylos is scarcely mentioned until the 13th century, when it became part of the Frankish Principality of Achaea. Increasingly known by its French name of Port-de-Jonc or its Italian name Navarino, in the 1280s the Franks built the Old Navarino castle on the site. Pylos came under the control of the Republic of Venice from 1417 until 1500, when it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans used Pylos and its bay as a naval base, and built the New Navarino fortress there. The area remained under Ottoman control, with the exception of a brief period of renewed Venetian rule from 1685–1715 and a Russian occupation from 1770–71, until the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt recovered it for the Ottomans in 1825, but the defeat of the Turco-Egyptian fleet in the 1827 Battle of Navarino and the French military intervention of the 1828 Morea expedition forced Ibrahim to withdraw from the Peloponnese and confirmed Greek independence. The current city was built outside the fortress walls by the military engineers of the Morea expedition from 1829 and the name Pylos was revived by royal decree in 1833.

Mystras or Mistras (Greek: Μυστρᾶς/Μιστρᾶς), also known in the Chronicle of the Morea as Myzethras or Myzithras (Μυζηθρᾶς), is a fortified town and a former municipality in Laconia, Peloponnese, Greece. Situated in the Taygetus range, above ancient Sparta, and below a "Frankish" castle, it served as the capital of the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea in the 14th and 15th centuries, experiencing a period of prosperity and cultural flowering during the Palaeologan Renaissance, including the teachings of Gemistos Plethon. The city also attracted artists and architects of the highest quality.

Mystras remained inhabited throughout the Ottoman period, when Western travellers mistook it for ancient Sparta. In the 1830s, it was abandoned and the new town of Sparta was built, approximately eight kilometres to the east. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the Sparta municipality. As an exceptionally well-preserved example of a Byzantine city and because of its testimony to the development of Late Byzantine and Post-byzantine art, Mystras was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1989.

The sack of Constantinople occurred in April 1204 and marked the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Crusaders sacked and destroyed most of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. After the capture of the city, the Latin Empire (known to the Byzantines as the Frankokratia, or the Latin occupation) was established and Baldwin IX of Flanders crowned emperor in Hagia Sophia.

After the city's sacking, most of the Byzantine Empire's territories were divided up among the Crusaders. Byzantine aristocrats also established a number of small independent splinter states—one of them being the Empire of Nicaea, which eventually recaptured Constantinople in 1261 and proclaimed the reinstatement of the Empire. However, the restored Empire never managed to reclaim all its former territory or attain its earlier economic strength, and it gradually succumbed to the rising Ottoman Empire over the following two centuries.

The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was a Latin Christian armed expedition called by Pope Innocent III. The stated intent of the expedition was to recapture the Muslim-controlled city of Jerusalem, by first defeating the powerful Egyptian Ayyubid Sultanate. However, a sequence of economic and political events culminated in the Crusader army's 1202 siege of Zara and the 1204 sack of Constantinople, rather than the conquest of Egypt as originally planned. This led to the partition of the Byzantine Empire by the Crusaders and their Venetian allies, leading to a period known as the Frankokratia ("Rule of the Franks" in Greek).

In 1201, the Republic of Venice contracted with the Crusader leaders to build a dedicated fleet to transport their invasion force. However, the leaders greatly overestimated the number of soldiers who would embark from Venice, since many sailed from other ports, and the army that appeared could not pay the contracted price. In lieu of payment, the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo proposed that the Crusaders back him in attacking the rebellious city of Zara (Zadar) on the eastern Adriatic coast. This led in November 1202 to the siege and sack of Zara, the first attack against a Catholic city by a Catholic Crusader army, despite Pope Innocent III's calls for the Crusaders not to attack fellow Christians. The city was then brought under Venetian control. When the Pope heard of this, he temporarily excommunicated the Crusader army.

The Realm or Kingdom of Candia (Venetian: Regno de Càndia; Italian: Regno di Candia; Greek: Βασίλειο της Κάντιας, romanized: Vasíleio tis Kántias) or Duchy of Candia (Venetian: Dogado de Càndia; Italian: Ducato di Candia; Greek: Δουκάτο της Κάντιας, romanized: Doukáto tis Kántias) was the official name of Crete during the island's period as an overseas territory of the Republic of Venice, from the initial Venetian conquest in 1205–1212 to its fall to the Ottoman Empire during the Cretan War (1645–1669). The island was at the time and up to the early modern era commonly known as Candia after its capital, Candia or Chandax (modern Heraklion). In modern Greek historiography, the period is known as the Venetocracy (Greek: Βενετοκρατία, romanized: Venetokratía, or Ενετοκρατία, Enetokratía).

The island of Crete had formed part of the Byzantine Empire until 1204, when the Fourth Crusade dissolved the empire and divided its territories amongst the crusader leaders (see Frankokratia). Crete was initially allotted to Boniface of Montferrat, but, unable to enforce his control over the island, he soon sold his rights to Venice. Venetian troops first occupied the island in 1205, but it took until 1212 for it to be secured, especially against the opposition of Venice's rival Genoa. Thereafter, the new colony took shape: the island was divided into six provinces (sestieri) named after the divisions of the city of Venice itself, while the capital Candia was directly subjected to the Commune Veneciarum. The islands of Tinos and Cythera, also under Venetian control, came under the kingdom's purview. In the early 14th century, this division was replaced by four provinces, almost identical to the four modern prefectures.