The Adriatic Sea: A Complete Guide to Its Geography, History, and Modern Challenges

The Adriatic Sea is a northern arm of the Mediterranean Sea lying between the Italian and northern Balkan peninsulas. Extending along a northwest-southeast axis about 480 miles in length, it varies in width from 45 to 120 miles and covers some 60,000 miles². The Adriatic Sea’s southern limit lies at the Strait of Otranto, where its waters join those of the Ionian Sea.

Relatively shallow in the northernmost of its three large basins, the Adriatic reaches its greatest depth (slightly more than 4,000 ft) in its southern basin. A number of large rivers flow into the Adriatic, and thanks to the freshwater from these and submarine springs, it is less salty than the Mediterranean as a whole. The tidal range—the difference in the height of the water between high and low tides—is 3 feet in the northern Adriatic but in general is much less. The sea’s deep currents flow along its coasts in an anticlockwise direction.

Whereas the western (Italian) coast of the Adriatic is alluvial and flat and has few natural harbors, the eastern coast is rugged, often deeply indented, and studded with numerous rocky islands. The northern coast is low and marshy. A humid subtropical climate predominates in the northern region, whereas the southern area enjoys a typical Mediterranean climate. A notoriously savage north wind known as the bora blows down the sea’s eastern shores, most frequently during the winter, and has scoured the coast and nearby islands clear of much of their vegetation. The sirocco blows from the south, often carrying dust from the Arabian and Sahara deserts. Another common wind, the mild maestral, develops along the eastern shores during the summer when the land heats up faster than the sea.

Approximately at the beginning of the tenth century BCE, a number of peoples vied for control of the Adriatic, including the Illyrians, who operated from their harbors on the eastern coast, and the Etruscans, who came to occupy the northwestern coast. (It is believed that the Etruscan port of Adria, which lies near the point where the main stream of the Po river enters the sea gave the sea its name.) The Greeks began to colonize the sea’s southern shores in the seventh century BCE and established trade as far north as Adria. A significant Roman presence in the Adriatic dating from the mid-third century BCE culminated in complete Roman control of the region.

Over the course of the Middle Ages, several powers, including the Byzantine Empire (a continuation of the Roman Empire), the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Ottoman Empire, controlled portions of the Adriatic’s coasts and waters. The famed city of Venice, which lies north of Adria and is built on a group of small islands in a marshy lagoon, rose to a position of prominence about 1000 CE and came to rule a maritime empire that extended down the eastern coast of the Adriatic and into the Ionian and Aegean seas. Venice held sway in the Adriatic for several centuries but in time lost ground to other powers and eventually fell to French General Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-821) in 1797.

The unification of Italy in 1861 reaffirmed Italian control of the Adriatic’s western waters, and Italy continued to exercise some influence over the eastern coast as well. During the same period, the northeastern coast was ruled as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the empire’s collapse after the First World War led to the creation of Yugoslavia, which retained much the same coastline. Yugoslavia itself disintegrated during the early 1990s into several smaller nations, including Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro. In the early twenty-first century, these four nations, along with Italy and Albania, share the Adriatic’s coastline.

The city of Venice has long been an important tourist destination, and over the past century, the coast of Croatia has attracted a large number of visitors as well. More recently, Montenegro and Albania have begun to encourage tourism. Although the influx of visitors has produced welcome revenue, it has brought problems as well, including increasing demands for energy and spreading environmental degradation. Grove Koger.

FURTHER READING:Abulafia, David. 2011. The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Crowley, Roger. 2013. City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas. New York: Random House. Hodgkinson, Harry. 1956. The Adriatic Sea. New York: Macmillan.

Norwich, John Julius. 2006. The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean. New York: Doubleday.