Nafplio developed around a sheltered harbor on the Argolic Gulf, a location occupied since antiquity and linked with the ancient settlement of Nauplia. The fortified heights of Akronafplia and nearby Palamidi dominate the town. Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian, and Ottoman rulers successively strengthened the harbor because it controlled maritime access to the Argolid. The old town below preserves this layered history in narrow streets, churches, mosques, houses, fountains, and public buildings rather than in one uniform architectural period.

Venice seized Nafplio in the late fourteenth century and held it, with interruptions, until the Ottoman conquest of 1540. Ottoman administration reshaped existing buildings and defenses. Venice recovered the town in 1686 during the Morean War and called it Napoli di Romania. During this second occupation, engineers modernized fortifications for artillery and expanded settlement toward the waterfront. The sea fortress of Bourtzi, Akronafplia’s older defenses, and new walls together protected a strategically important naval and administrative center.

Palamidi Fortress was built rapidly between 1711 and 1714 on the high ridge east of town. Rather than a single enclosed castle, it consists of linked, mutually supporting bastions adapted to the terrain. Each could defend itself if another section fell. Despite the ambitious design, Ottoman forces captured Nafplio in 1715 after a short siege, ending Venice’s second rule. The Ottomans repaired and occupied the fortress, while the town below remained a diverse port with military, commercial, and religious functions.

During the Greek War of Independence, forces led by Staikos Staikopoulos captured Palamidi in November 1822, compelling the Ottoman garrison to surrender Nafplio. The town became a center of the revolutionary government and, in 1828, the first capital of the internationally recognized Greek state under Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias. Political conflict culminated in his assassination at the church of Agios Spyridon in 1831. King Otto arrived in 1833, but the capital moved to Athens the following year.

Palamidi later served as a prison, and popular memory strongly associates one cell with revolutionary commander Theodoros Kolokotronis, though details of its identification have been debated. Demolition of parts of Nafplio’s walls in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries opened the town to expansion, while preservation gradually recast fortifications and old neighborhoods as heritage. Today the combined landscape explains how a fortified port became a national capital. Venetian engineering, Ottoman adaptation, revolutionary memory, and modern civic life remain visible within walking distance. The surviving street scale also distinguishes everyday urban history from the monumental military skyline.