Ukraine - Trading Posts and Fortifications on Genoese Trade Routes. From the Mediterranean to the Black Sea

This selection of "Trading Posts and Fortifications on Genoese Trade Routes. From the Mediterranean to the Black Sea" includes some of the most significant examples, chosen from a dense network of maritime and mercantile settlements distributed around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In their physical form and variety, these settlements share recognisable urban and architectural features, and represent a strongly individualised system of ancient seaborne trading ports, situated in areas where the Genoese influence is still clearly legible. Genoa's several hundred medieval harbours in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Atlantic, and northern Europe are evidence of its presence in all those areas between the 11 th and 15th centuries. As the outward expression of the strategic activity in which it was engaged during that period, the particular characteristics of these settlements were a product of the uniquely Italian system of comuni (sovereign city-states). The settlements were based on locally modified versions of Genoa's domestic economic model, which was essentially private or public/private (and was only rarely wholly public). From place to place, to a greater or lesser extent, the Genoese allowed these settlements to respond to local conditions. But whilst they were all significantly different, they were also the interdependent parts of a coherent network, designed to ensure maximum mobility and operational flexibility for the ruling class of Genoese and Ligurian families, who had organised themselves into groups of great importance, and had branches all over the world.