Admiral Marcantonio Bragadino,

         
      Bragadino was a remarquable Venitian captain who defended Famagusta during the XVIth century wars against the Turkish. He was competent and courageous but, after several months of siege, he had to give up. The Turkish leader offered honorable conditions and Bragadino left the fortress to sign the surrender, clad in the crimson robe of his responsability and protected from the sun by a big ceremonial umbrella. The pasha welcomed him courteously at first. But suddenly, during the ceremony, the Turkish leader leaped up, accused Bragadino of atrocities on the prisoners and ordered that the Venitian officers should be slaughtered right away.

      Bragadino's fate was even worse. Three times he was about to be beheaded, and by sophisticated crualty, the executioner was made to stop. His nose and ears were cut off, his body mutilated and for ten days he was, every morning, loaded with baskets of earth, led to the Turkish fortifications and asked to stop in front of the pasha's tent where he had to kiss the ground. He was heaved up a boat's yard and was left there hanging for hours. He suffered from all sorts of sadistic and degrading mocking remarks. He was eventually led to the big square of the town, undressed, chained to a stake and his skin was torn off under the eyes of the pasha. His skin was stuffed and paraded in the streets on cow back with his red umbrella over it to make fun of him. When the pasha finally went back to the Golden Horn triomphantly, this gruesome trophy was hung at the bowsprit of the standard ship.

      The skin was kept in the Turkish arsenal in Constantinople. Years later, the Venitians took it back, some say bought it, others say stole it. It can now be seen above the bust of Bragadino in a little stone-made urn where his yellowed and sewn skin rests, carefully fold, like a hankerchief in a drawer.

James Morris