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 Ob Gulf of Ob The Gulf of Ob (also known as "Ob Bay") (, "Obskaya guba") is a bay of the Arctic Ocean, located in Northern Russia at the mouth of the Ob River. It is the world's longest estuary. The mouth of the Gulf of Ob is in the Kara Sea between the Gydan and Yamal peninsulas. It is about long and varies in width from about , and generally runs north and south. The gulf is relatively shallow, with an average depth from , which restricts heavy sea transport. The Taz Estuary is an eastern side-branch formed by the