Antiquity, Byzantium and crusaders
Kallipolis (Greek), or in Latin Callipolis, was a city in the eastern part of the Thracian Chersonese ("Chersonesus Thracica" in Greek, now known as the Gallipoli Peninsula), on the right shore, and at the entrance of the Dardanelles.
The Byzantine Emperor Justinian II fortified the city and established there important military warehouses for grain and wine.[citation needed]
In 1304, Kallipolis briefly came under the control of the renegade Catalan group of mercenaries known as the Catalan Company, who, at that time, had just previously revolted against their Byzantine clients. In 1307, the Catalan Company, fearing retaliation by Byzantine forces, razed the city to the ground, and retreated to the relative safety of the area surrounding the city of Cassandria, leaving the city in ruins.[citation needed]
[edit] Ottoman era
After the devastating 1354 earthquake, the Greek city was almost abandoned, but swiftly reoccupied by Turks from Anatolia, the Asiatic side of the straits, making Gallipoli the first Ottoman possession in Europe, and the staging area for their expansion across the Balkans.[1]
The peninsula which was inhabited by populations of the Byzantine Empire was gradually conquered by the Ottoman Empire starting from 13th century onwards until the 15th. The Greeks living there were allowed to continue their everyday life. Gallipoli (in Turkish, Gelibolu) was made the chief town of a Kaymakamlik (district) in the vilayet (a Wali's province) of Adrianople, with about 30,000 inhabitants, Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Jews.
Gallipoli became a major encampment for British and French forces in 1854 during the Crimean War, and the harbour was also a stopping-off point on the way to Constantinople.[2][3]
The peninsula did not see any more wars up until World War I when the British Empire allies trying to find a way to reach its troubled ally in the east, Imperial Russia, decided to try to obtain passage to the east. The Ottomans set up defensive fortifications along the peninsula with German help.
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 Crimea. From there many went to European countries where they found refuge, such as Yugoslavia. 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 of 2008 reconstruction of the monument had begun with the consent of the Turkish government.