Two years earlier, in June of 1562 Giulio Savorgnan, a feudal nobleman from Patria del Friuli  and a man of arms serving the Republic, had arrived at Cyprus. This was the first stop in a journey which was to take over four years, in which he would visit all the fortresses of the Venetian maritime dominion, from the Aegean to Albania, and Dalmatia to Istria. The radical restructuring envisaged by Savorgnan for the fortress of Famagosta  (a port city with 8,000 inhabitants) to make it as 'impregnable' as was humanly possible, reveals the first sign of Venice's new regard for its fortified territories. This new interest would inevitably lead to the involvement of nearby Candia  as well as Corfù and other Ionian islands .