The Venetians were on better terms with the Byzantines than they had been in the past. Sure they had conquered Constantinople and carved up the Empire in 1204! But that was a long time ago and in 1453 the Venetians, Genoese, and other Italian cities were allied with the Byzantines and tried to help defend against the Ottoman siege. Unfortunately for them, what little help they could give was not nearly enough, and Constantinople fell on May 29.

Venice still controlled large parts of the former empire in the Aegean Sea, such as the islands of Crete and Euboea (which the Venetians called Candia and Negroponte). Venetian and other Italian merchants and colonists from Constantinople and the Aegean sent letters and messengers back to Italy immediately after the city fell. It only took a couple of weeks for the first rumours to spread through Italy, but but it took about a month for official reports to arrive.

The Genoese governor of Pera (the Genoese colony on the north side of the Golden Horn, opposite Constantinople) wrote a letter, which probably arrived in Genoa as early as June 17. The Venetian governor of Negroponte heard the news on June 3 but his letter didn’t arrive in Venice until June 29, after everyone had already heard the rumours (presumably from the Genoese). The citizens of Venice gathered outside the doge’s palace to hear the letter read out loud, and to yell at the doge for not doing anything to prevent it! What could he have done though? There actually was a Venetian fleet already at sea, heading towards Constantinople, but it turned back in June when it heard the news being sent back the other way to Genoa and Venice. The fleet arrived back home a few days after the letter from Negroponte.

The Venetians informed the Pope in a letter on June 30. Rumours had spread to Rome already as well, but the official report from Venice arrived by the end of July. On September 30, the pope announced plans for a new crusade to take back Constantinople, but of course nothing ever came of it.

Sources:

Jonathan Harris, The End of Byzantium (Yale University Press, 2012)

Michael Angold, The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans: Context and Consequences (Taylor & Francis, 2012)

Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 (Cambridge University Press, 1965, repr. Canto, 1990)

Marios Philippides and Walter K. Hanak, The Siege and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453: Historiography, Topography, and Military Studies (Ashgate, 2011)