History of the Republic of Venice were little compensation. This was the last war of the Republic with Turkey. The decline of Venice in the 18th century was also due not only to Genoa, Venice's old rival, but also to Livorno, a new port on the Tyrrhenian Sea created by the grand dukes of Tuscany and chosen as staging-post for British trade in the Mediterranean. Still more injurious were the Papal town of Ancona and Habsburg Trieste, a free port since 1719, in the Adriatic Sea, which no longer constituted a "Venetian Gulf". An eminent Venetian politician of the time declared, "Apart from the residue which
Gulf of Mersin Gulf of Mersin Gulf of Mersin () is one of the widest gulfs in Turkey. It is in the northeast of the Levantine Sea between the gulfs of İskenderun and Antalya. ( The Levantine Sea is the easternmost part of the Mediterranean Sea.) The gulf of Mersin is between Taşucu in the west and Karataş in the east. The total distance between these two points is approximately 115 km. ( ≈ 71 mi or 62 nmi). The city of Mersin is roughly at the center of the coastline. The total water surface is about 2 300 km ( ≈ 888