The commercial expansion of Italian maritime cities in the eastern Mediterranean and, later, in the Black Sea basin was the result of many factors. However, the fundamental condition persisted, and the virtuous relationship between city and countryside, typical of ‘Roman’ Europe, was at the basis of the growing availability of capital that Genoa and Venice poured into the Black Sea basin from the second half of the thirteenth century. Even the states that hosted the Genoese and Venetian merchants – such as the Golden Horde – founded their prosperity principally on agricultural and rural factors. Genoa and Venice, in particular, became the crucial junctions of the flow of goods that from the depths of Asia reached Europe through a network of installations often equipped with structured and efficient on-site administrations. The growing rivalry between Genoa and Venice on the Black Sea for the supply of grain, produced in the Crimean hinterland, is a further demonstration of it.