<P> The Byzantine Empire, the remnant of the ancient Roman Empire which ruled most of the Greek - speaking world for over 1100 years, had been fatally weakened since the sacking of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204 . </P> <P> The Ottoman advance into Greece was preceded by victory over the Serbs to its north . First, the Ottomans won the Battle of Maritsa in 1371 . The Serb forces were then led by the King Vukašin of Serbia, the father of Prince Marko and the co-ruler of the last emperor from the Serbian Nemanjic dynasty . This was followed by another Ottoman victory in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo . </P> <P> With no further threat by the Serbs and the subsequent Byzantine civil wars, the Ottomans besieged and took Constantinople in 1453 and then advanced southwards into Greece, capturing Athens in 1458 . The Greeks held out in the Peloponnese until 1460, and the Venetians and Genoese clung to some of the islands, but by the early 16th century all of mainland Greece and most of the Aegean islands were in Ottoman hands, excluding several port cities still held by the Venetians (Nafplio, Monemvasia, Parga and Methone the most important of them). The mountains of Greece were largely untouched, and were a refuge for Greeks who desired to flee Ottoman rule and engage in guerrilla warfare . </P> <P> The Cyclades islands, in the middle of the Aegean, were officially annexed by the Ottomans in 1579, although they were under vassal status since the 1530s . Cyprus fell in 1571, and the Venetians retained Crete until 1669 . The Ionian Islands were never ruled by the Ottomans, with the exception of Kefalonia (from 1479 to 1481 and from 1485 to 1500), and remained under the rule of the Republic of Venice . It was in the Ionian Islands where modern Greek statehood was born, with the creation of the Republic of the Seven Islands in 1800 . </P>

When did the ottoman empire take over greece