The Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovacka Republika) occupied, from the middle ages to 1808, a coastal strip in the south of present-day Yugoslavia, stretching from the south of Konavli, not far from Kotor (Cattaro), to the Neretva valley and including the peninsula of Peljesac, the islands of Mljet and Lastovo, and the city of Ragusa, nowadays called Dubrovnik, its Serbo-croatian name. It formed an aristocratically-ruled, trading city-state in the Italian tradition, and under the protection of the Ottoman Empire outlived that tradition for a long time. At the beginning of the 13th century the territory became a possession of Venice. One and a half century later, the sovereignty passed to the kings of Hungary who interfered in no way with Ragusa's affairs, so that the Ragusans started to call their constitutional unit a Republic, as in fact it was, and which it remained until it was conquered by Napoleon.