The exhibition LEPANTO 1571, 450 YEARS SINCE THE GREATEST VICTORY OF THE CHRISTIANS is organised in the context of the anniversary programme of the Byzantine and Christian Museum “From the Fall of Constantinople to the Greek Revolution, 1453-1821” celebrating 200 years since the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence.

The period that followed the Fall of Constantinople (1453) saw in Greece a plethora of revolutionary movements staged by Greeks against the Ottomans that culminated in the Greek War of Independence and the resurgence of 1821. October 7th 1571 marks a turning point in this age-old conflict, remembered in history as the day in which the allied Christian fleets of Europe’s Holy League, including ships provided by Orthodox territories under Venetian rule, defeated the Ottoman Empire at the Echinades archipelago off the coast of Lepanto (Naupactus). It was one of the greatest naval battles of the time, a landmark victory in European history which took place in the Mediterranean, and in fact, in the Ionian Sea where, almost inescapably, the Battle of Actium occurred in 31 BC, but also the Battle of Navarino was fought in 1827 that determined the outcome of the Greek War of Independence of 1821.





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