26 February 1489
Venetian Annexation
Under pressure from Venice, Queen Caterina Cornaro gives up the crown. Cyprus becomes a Venetian possession, governed for Venice until 1570.
Since the death of her husband James II in 1473, Queen Caterina Cornaro had reigned over Cyprus with Venice close behind her. By the late 1480s the republic wanted something firmer. Two worries drove it. The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Bayezid II was growing stronger in the eastern Mediterranean, and Venice had uncovered a plan to marry Caterina to Alfonso of Naples, which could have handed the island to a rival power.
In 1488 the Venetian government decided to recall the queen and take Cyprus for itself. Caterina, pressed by Venetian authorities, had little real choice. On 26 February 1489 she gave up her rights to the Republic of Venice, and the formal handover of the island’s administration followed on 14 March. Sources differ on which date marks the abdication, and both appear in histories of the period.
Caterina left for Venice, where she was received with great ceremony. She kept the title of queen and was given the lordship of Asolo, a small town in the Veneto, which she governed until war drove her out in 1509. She died in Venice on 10 July 1510.
Cyprus was now a Venetian overseas territory, run from Nicosia by officials sent from Venice. For Venice the island’s value was above all strategic and commercial. Venice also took over the kingdom’s obligation to pay tribute for Cyprus, first to the Mamluks of Egypt and, after 1517, to the Ottoman sultan.
Venetian rule lasted 82 years. It ended when Ottoman forces landed in July 1570, took Nicosia that September and forced Famagusta to surrender in August 1571 after a long siege.