City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas

The rise of Venice to become the great emporium for the West’s trade with the East was closely connected with the Byzantine recovery; culturally, Venice was really an outpost of the great metropolis at Constantinople – as its architecture revealed.

The Portuguese kingdom was a small weak state perched on the Atlantic periphery. But by c.1400 its rulers and merchants were able to exploit its one magnificent asset, the harbour of Lisbon. Europe’s Atlantic coast had become an important trade route between the Mediterranean and North West Europe.