Amalfi Genova Pisa Venezia

Amalfi is city from the ancient origins.
The legend wants Amalfi to have been founded by Ercole in name of his/her beloved nymph, which had brief life. Ercole wanted to bury her/it in an enchanting place in which, to testimony of a great love, it founded a city that brought his/her name.
A first historical hypothesis, sustains instead, that you/he/she was founded after the death of Costantino; Amalfi would draw his/her origins from Roman families that, you embark for Constantinople, you/they were crushed by a storm in the gulf of Policastro; they would have so founded one «Melphes», the actual Melfi then transferred him, more to north, you/they would have taken abode in the place in the actual Amalfi, founding her/it with the name of «Á.-Melphes».
Other hypothesis is that you/he/she was founded from fugitive in escape from the hunting it turns them from the Ostrogoti.
The first certain news in Amalfi goes up again to 533, to the time of the Greek-Gothic war when, with the victory of Narsete on Teia, Amalfi passed under the dominion of the Byzantine empire and entered to belong to the dukedom in Naples. Submitted to the Byzantines, it became a center of traffici between the east and southern Italy. In the You century became center of Diocese. The city lost part of its commercial power under the kingdom of the Longobardis that, although they didn't succeed in a first time in occupying her/it, they did only subsequently it thanks to the help of Salerno, historical enemy.
In fact, in the 836, Sicardo, prince of Benevento, occupied Amalfi and ransacked her/it deporting the inhabitants to Salerno; but the subjugation lasted very little because of the indifference of Bisanzio and the undoing of the pricipato of Benevento. Amalfi was constituted, around the 850, in an autonomous Republic held up by two judges that, they were let dukes subsequently called.
The city knew how to hold, for reasons for commerce, good relationships with all the powers in Italy and also with the world mussulmano; relationships, this last, that it then broke for taking sides himself/herself/themselves with the popes. In the X century became a power marinara and with its ships it ploughed all the seas, from the Mediterranean in the extreme East, developing a flourishing commerce that produced huge wealths for its inhabitants; they also developed him the art and the culture, you/they were created some commercial rules, the Code of the international maritime Right was born, the navigators improved the compass.
In 1048 the amalfitanis founded the hospital of S. Giovanni to Jerusalem from which it drew then the name the order of the Riders Ospitalieri.
The city reached the maximum shine in the first halves the century XI but, in 1073, subdued by the Norman ones, he/she saw to begin its decadence: it came to conflict with Venice and Bisanzio, among them ally, and lost a lot of the influences and privileges that it counted in the East. In 1131 it was attached later to the Kingdom of Sicily and a few years you/he/she was attached and ransacked twice by Pisa (1135 and 1137).
It had an apparent resumption in the XIII century under Fred II. In 1343 a dreadful seaquake, described by the Petrarca, it invested the coastline; big part of the inhabited area must be destroyed (with it probably also the Ducal building, quoted in a document as «palatium amalphitanum»), the fortifications, the shipyards, the stores and the maritime equipments were submerged. Five years later, the 1348 famous plague, described by the Boccaccio, it completed the work of destruction among the men. Amalfi and all the towns of the coast that splendid populated places had been and strengthen, rich of sumptuous buildings, adorned of frescos, marbles, columns, fountains, set out to become modest countries that, deprived of the wealth that came from the sea, they returned to the traditional economy of the fishing, of the local craftsmanship and of the agriculture. Amalfi practically goes out of the scene of the great cities to marinate.