After imposing its power on the countries of the Adriatic and the former Byzantine empire, Venice became the scene for exchanges between the Orient and the countries of the Levant. The structures of Venetian society were nourished by those different episodes of immigration that have punctuated the history of the Republic. Venetian sources show that after the seizure of the island of Cyprus there was an intensification of the already long-standing relations between Cyprus and the Serenissima. The Venetian expansion had consequences in human terms, namely the movement towards the Metropolis of a part of Cypriot society which thus joined the Greek community that had already been established for several decades in a "Confraternity of St George of the Greeks". But the Cypriot community was no longer a faithful reflection of the Greek minority that preceded it, and these Cypriots were to become at the turn of the 17th century "the Greek colony of Venice".
When described quantitatively and above all qualitatively, the problematic of Greek settlement in Venice reflects the social reactions of the Republic and allows us to see how the Venetian polity, whose real tolerance was never disinterested, functioned when faced with this immigration.
The impact resulting from overseas colonisation – a very particular one in the case of Cyprus – can therefore be demonstrated, at least as far as the human aspects are concerned, in a city of many centuries' cosmopolitanism, where the maintenance of individualities yielded not at all to the affirmation of a Venetian identity.Imhaus Brunehilde. La minorité chypriote de Venise du XVIe siècle au début du XVIIe siècle. In: Chypre et la Méditerranée orientale. Formations identitaires : perspectives historiques et enjeux contemporains. Actes du colloque tenu à Lyon, 1997, Université Lumière-Lyon 2, Université de Chypre. Lyon : Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, 2000. pp. 33-41. (Travaux de la Maison de l'Orient méditerranéen, 31
