The capture of Gallipoli in 1358 gave the Ottoman Empire its first lasting base in Europe, a beachhead from which it would expand across the Balkans over the following century. What began as a foothold on the Dardanelles eventually grew into an empire stretching from Vienna's gates to the Persian Gulf.
Gallipoli's strategic position on the Dardanelles Strait made it the perfect gateway for Ottoman expansion into the Balkans. Sultan Orhan's forces, aided by an earthquake that had already weakened the fortress walls, secured the crossing point that Byzantine emperors had failed to adequately defend amid their own civil wars.
This single foothold proved impossible to dislodge. Within a century, Ottoman armies would sweep through Thrace, Bulgaria, and Serbia, culminating in the fall of Constantinople itself in 1453.
The irony of history is thick here: nearly 560 years later, the same Gallipoli peninsula would become the site of one of World War I's bloodiest campaigns, as Allied forces tried and failed to force the strait in 1915.
Key people: Orhan I