Explore More - 2019

54 VIKING.COM | EXPLORE

54 VIKING.COM | EXPLORE MORE 2019

THE MEDITERRANEAN Mediterranean HISTORY Empires have risen and fallen in this fascinating region For more than 5,000 years, the Mediterranean has been at the center of history (its name literally means “amid land,” or “the center of earth”). Some of the earliest civilizations were born in the middle of the Mediterranean region, on one of its largest islands, the Greek island of Crete. Crete and Greece as a whole form an integral part of Mediterranean history, as the ancient Greeks set out to establish colonies across modern Europe and North Africa, with settlements everywhere from France to Sicily and even Crimea. The birthplace of democracy, Athens’s influence spread across the sea, and following Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire, Athenians established modern-day Greece, the Middle East and Egypt as Greek speaking, which they would remain until their ultimate annexation by the Roman Republic. This Roman Republic became an empire, which ruled every corner of the Mediterranean, or Mare Nostrum (Our Sea). The legacy of the Romans can be felt everywhere in Europe, with ruins, roads, and of course, aqueducts, but also the more subtle legacy of Latin, the root of most widely spoken languages in Europe. The empire split and Rome declined, with the West ultimately falling in 476, but the Roman Empire lived on in the East, centered around the “Queen of Cities,” Constantinople (now Istanbul). This was the greatest city in the world until it was besieged in 1204 when the Crusaders arrived, capturing, looting and destroying parts of it. Istanbul was also split by faith—between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Church, a difference that becomes apparent the farther east you go. The Holy Land itself is a feature of the Mediterranean, and includes Israel, which became a state in 1948. You can trace the routes taken by Crusaders who sailed from Europe into what is now modern-day Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Israel, and fought against the Islamic world for nearly 200 years. In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, who had formed an empire after being driven east by the Mongol Hordes in the 12th and 13th centuries. Facing page: The Pantheon in Rome, one of the best-preserved temples from Roman times Below: A vintage map of Europe The Ottomans dominated the eastern Mediterranean for the next 500 years. The remains of the western Roman Empire, meanwhile, would be fought over by Spain, Britain and France. While the Spanish went into the Atlantic and the French enjoyed their Napoleonic moment of domination and ruled North Africa, it would be the British who took the Suez Canal in the 1800s and established control over Egypt. British rule over Gibraltar continues to this day, and their control of Malta, Gibraltar and the Suez was instrumental in the defeat of Benito Mussolini’s Italy and his German allies during World War II. Recent history has seen the birth of dozens of new countries; and today, the Mediterranean remains a strong symbol of possibility and freedom around the world. EXPLORE MORE 2019 VIKING.COM 55