Third Period of Venetian Rule

In 1463, when war broke out between the Turks and the Venetians, someone by the name of Comino captured the castle of Myrina, after successive attacks, and consolidated his authority (in the view of some researchers, Comino was Georgios Dromokates Palaiologos-Komnenos, who on other fronts too continued to struggle with the Venetians in their war against the Turks, while in the view of others, Comino was a pirate from the Morea). However, realizing that he could not keep power without help, Comino conceded his conquest, for a price, to the Venetians, for whom the geographical location of Lemnos was of great strategic importance in their war against the Turks. Demetrios Palaiologos, who, as said, after the expulsion of the Venetians from Lemnos in 1459 had been appointed governor of the island, under the suzerainty of Mohamed II, was headquartered at Ainos in Thrace and had paid the island little attention. So, in 1464, the Venetian fleet commanded by Admiral Luigi Loredano arrived at Lemnos, took over the castle of Myrina and then captured the whole island. The new period of Venetian Rule, which was destined to be the last, lasted for 15 years, about as long as the war between Venice and the Ottomans (First Veneto-Turkish War 1463–1479). 

During this period of Venetian Rule, the Turks attacked the island many times, almost every year, in their repeated efforts to recapture Lemnos and the castle, as for instance in 1468 when they attacked the island and most probably the castle with 11 pirate ships, but without success, or the following year, in 1469, when they returned even more menacingly and looted Kotsinas.

A vicious attack was launched on Lesbos in 1470, by Admiral Mahmud Pasha, who captured Kotsinas and plundered the surrounding area. However, despite all his efforts, he failed to break the strong naval might of the Venetians and to capture the most important fortress, the castle of Myrina. In fact, Mahmud Pasha made two consecutive failed sieges of the castle of Myrina, which was defended by Antonio de Capoto. Initially he besieged the castle in March 1470, but even though Mahmud Pasha had more ships he retreated, not daring to confront the Venetian fleet. Later, in June of the same year, he besieged the castle again for 5 days and nights, making 5 assaults, but was forced to break the siege and to retreat, despite the numerical superiority of his forces (70,000 men and 300 ships, as opposed to 33 Venetian vessels). So he avoided, yet once more, combatting the Venetian fleet which had arrayed for a naval battle.

There is no doubt that the Ottomans were determined to fight with all their powers in order to take Lemnos, but the Venetians too, with the help of the locals, struggled hard to defend the island and to fend off its capture. The Greeks, as was generalized in the Venetian-Turkish wars, fought on the side of the Venetians, not only because they considered them less harsh than the Ottomans, but also because they nurtured the hope that the Venetians, being enemies of the Turks, would perhaps help them to get rid of the Ottoman conqueror.

Finally, in late January 1479, the Venetians, unable to cope with the demands of the war, which presupposed a battle-ready army and navy in their naval bases, and unable to withstand the relentless and continuous Ottoman pressures, were forced to capitulate. Lemnos passed to Ottoman sovereignty and Venetian Rule ceased. Almost two centuries later, the successful Venetian recapture of the island was of short duration (1656-1657) and Venetian rule ended forever.

The warring conflicts and sieges inevitably caused significant damage to the fortress. Added to this are the destructions caused by a severe earthquake that struck the island in 1471. Coriolano Cippico, in narrating the feats of the leading Venetian general Pietro Mocenigo, in the period 1472-1474, states that in Mocenigo’s inspection of the island in 1472 he found the fortifications of the castle of Myrina in a lamentable state, with large parts of the walls and towers in ruins. He notes also that Mocenigo most diligently repaired the castle and installed a fighting-fit garrison there.

Major repairs and reinforcements were made to the castle also in 1477, when the last Venetian governor of Lemnos, Francisco Pasqualigo, was in charge of the fortress in the period 1474-1477. After inspecting the island’s strongholds and noting the weak points, Pasqualigo went ahead with constructing additional fortifications, placing emphasis on the castle of Myrina, which was also the most important. In Karl Hopf’s Chroniques Greco-romanes we read the Latin phrase relating to these measures: «Paleokastro, Lemni castrum, a Venetis in Aegeo mari contra Turcos proeliantibus munitur».

Testimonies of the Venetian presence in the kastro at this period are two marble plaques with relief representations. On one plaque (0.875 x 0.61 x 0.20 m) is the usual image of the emblem of Venice, a lion holding a gospelbook in the claws of its right paw, above a row of 3 small relief escutcheons that once framed the coats of arms, now totally destroyed, of Doges or commanders of the castle in these years (the plaque is presently in the storerooms of the Archaeological Museum of Myrina).

The second marble plaque (0.55 x 0.41 x 0.16 m) is incorporated, upside-down in second use, in the battlements of the southeast fortification walls and carries two relief escutcheons framing the relief coats of arms of the Moro and the Nicolo Trono families. Christoforo Moro served as Doge of Venice (1462-1471) and Luigi Moro was governor of Lemnos from 1471 until 1474, while Nicolo Trono was Doge from 1471 to 1473.

Echo of Venetian rule are the various toponyms recorded by the Italian traveller Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, who came to the castle sometime between 1690 and 1695, such as San Marco, San Rocco, Santa Maria, obviously named after chapels that existed under the Venetians.