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Coordinates: 40°21′N 26°28′E﻿ / ﻿40.350°N 26.467°E﻿ / 40.350; 26.467

Satellite image of the Gallipoli peninsula and surrounding area

The Gallipoli peninsula (/ɡəˈlɪpɵli/; Turkish: Gelibolu Yarımadası; Greek: Καλλίπολη) is located in Turkish Thrace (or East Thrace), the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east. Gallipoli derives its name from the Greek "Καλλίπολις" (Kallipolis), meaning "Beautiful City".[1] In antiquity, it was known as the Thracian Chersonese (Latin: Chersonesus Thracica, Greek: Θρακική Χερσόνησος).

The peninsula runs in a south-westerly direction into the Aegean Sea, between the Hellespont (now known as the Dardanelles) and the bay of Melas (today Saros bay). Near Agora it was protected by a wall running across its full breadth.[2] The isthmus traversed by the wall was only 36 stadia in breadth[3] (about 6.5 km), but the length of the peninsula from this wall to its southern extremity, Cape Mastusia, was 420 stadia[3] (about 77.5 km).

The Gallipoli Campaign, a notable failed offensive by the Allies in World War I, took place on the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915.


In ancient times, the Gallipoli Peninsula was known as the Thracian Chersonesus ("Chersonesus" means "peninsula") to the Greeks and Romans. it was the location of several prominent towns, including Cardia, Pactya, Callipolis (Gallipoli), Alopeconnesus, Sestos, Madytos, and Elaeus. The peninsula was renowned for its wheat. It also benefited from its strategic importance on the main route between Europe and Asia, as well as from its control of the shipping route from Crimea. The city of Sestos was the main crossing-point on the Hellespont (Dardanelles).

The Thracian Chersonese was originally inhabited by Thracians. Settlers from Ancient Greece, mainly of Ionian and Aeolian stock, founded about 12 cities on the peninsula in the 7th century BC.[4] The Athenian statesman Miltiades the Elder founded a major Athenian colony there around 560 BC. He took authority over the entire peninsula, building up its defences against incursions from the mainland. It eventually passed to his nephew, the more famous Miltiades the Younger, around 524 BC. The peninsula was abandoned to the Persians in 493 BC after the outbreak of the Greco-Persian Wars (499–478 BC).

The Persians were eventually expelled, after which the peninsula was for a time ruled over by Athens, which enrolled it into the Delian League in 478 BC. The Athenians established a number of cleruchies on the Thracian Chersonese and sent an additional 1,000 settlers around 448 BC. Sparta gained control between 431 BC-404 BC, but the peninsula subsequently reverted to the Athenians. In the 4th century BC, the Thracian Chersonese became the focus of a bitter territorial dispute between Athens and Macedon, whose king Philip II sought possession. It was eventually ceded to Philip in 338 BC.

After the death of Philip's son Alexander the Great in 323 BC, the Thracian Chersonese became the object of contention among Alexander's successors. Lysimachus established his capital Lysimachia here. In 196 BC, the Seleucid king Antiochus III seized the peninsula. This alarmed the Greeks and prompted them to seek the aid of the Romans, who conquered the Thracian Chersonese, which they gave to their ally Eumenes II of Pergamon in 188 BC. At the extinction of the Attalid dynasty in 133 BC it passed again to the Romans, who from 129 BC administered it in the Roman province of Asia. It was subsequently made a state-owned territory (ager publicus) and during the reign of the emperor Caesar Augustus it was imperial property.

The Thracian Chersonese subsequently passed to the Byzantine Empire, which ruled it until the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century AD. In 1356 the peninsula became the first part of Europe to fall to the Ottomans, who subsequently made it a major base for raids and incursions into territories further afield.

In 443 AD, Attila the Hun invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula during one of the last stages of his grand campaign against the Eastern Roman Empire during that year. He captured both Kallipolis and Sestus, and he destroyed a significant portion of the Eastern Roman Army somewhere on the peninsula.

Ottoman Era[edit]

After the devastating 1354 earthquake, the Greek city of Gallipoli was almost abandoned, but swiftly reoccupied by Turks from Anatolia, the Asiatic side of the straits, making Gallipoli the first Ottoman position in Europe, and the staging area for their expansion across the Balkans.[5] The Greeks living there were allowed to continue their everyday life. In the 19th century, Gallipoli (Turkish: Gelibolu) was a district (kaymakamlik) in the Vilayet of Adrianople, with about thirty thousand inhabitants: comprising Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Jews.


Gallipoli did not experience any more wars until World War I, when British and colonial forces attacked the peninsula in 1915, seeking to secure a route to relieve their ally Imperial Russia in the east. The Ottomans set up defensive fortifications along the peninsula and the attackers were eventually repulsed.

In 1920 after the defeat of the Russian White army of General Pyotr Wrangel, a significant number of emigre soldiers and their families evacuated to Gallipoli from the Crimean Peninsula. From there, many went to European countries, such as Yugoslavia, where they found refuge. A stone monument was erected and a special "Gallipoli cross" was created to commemorate the soldiers, who stayed in Gallipoli. The stone monument was destroyed during an earthquake, but in January 2008 reconstruction of the monument had begun with the consent of the Turkish government.

Gallipoli Campaign[edit]

In early 1915, attempting to seize a strategic advantage in World War I by capturing Constantinople, the British authorised an attack on the peninsula. The first troops landed on 25 April 1915. After eight months of heavy fighting, the troops were withdrawn around the end of the year.

The campaign was one of the greatest Ottoman victories during the war and is considered a major Allied failure. In Turkey, it is regarded as a defining moment in the nation's history: a final surge in the defence of the motherland as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. The struggle formed the basis for the Turkish War of Independence and the founding of the Republic of Turkey eight years later under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who first rose to prominence as a commander at Gallipoli.

The Gallipoli Star was a military decoration created by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and awarded for the duration of World War I.

The campaign was the first major military action of Australia and New Zealand as independent dominions, and is often considered to mark the birth of national consciousness in those nations. The date of the landing, 25 April, is known as "Anzac Day". It remains the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in Australia and New Zealand.

Ecclesiastical history[edit]

Gallipoli remains a Roman Catholic titular bishopric in the former Roman province of Thrace under the title Callipolis. It was a suffragan of Heraclea. There were about six Greek speaking bishops recorded by the church historian Lequien[8] with the first at the First Council of Ephesus in 431, and the last about 1500 when the see was united with that of Coela,.[9] This list is incomplete as there was a continuous Greek Orthodox presence in Gallipoli until the early Twentieth Century, in 1904 the Greek Orthodox see was raised the rank of a metropolitan see. There were a number of Latin Rite bishops[10] from 1208 to 1518.[11]

Notable people from Gallipoli[edit]


  1. ^ Καλλίπολις, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus project
  2. ^ Xenophon, Hellenica, iii. 2; Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca, xiv. 38; Pliny, Natural History, iv. 18; Agathias, Histories, v; Plutarch, Parallel Lives, "Pericles", 19
  3. ^ a b Herodotus, The Histories, vi. 36; Xenophon, ibid.; Pseudo-Scylax, Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax, 67 (PDF)
  4. ^ Herodotus, vi. 34; Cornelius Nepos, Lives of Eminent Commanders, "Miltiades", 1
  6. ^ Crimea.
  7. ^ Crimea, Victorian Web.
  8. ^ I, 1123, from Wikisource-logo.svg "Callipolis". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
  9. ^ Alternate names are Coelia or Coele
  10. ^ Lequien (III, 971) from Wikisource-logo.svg "Callipolis". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
  11. ^ See Eubel, I, 269, note. from Wikisource-logo.svg "Callipolis". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 

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