I recommend www.alc.co.jp as a starting point for these kinds of questions. It contains a huge library of example sentences and you can search multiple words simultaneously in both English and Japanese.
That said, here is my translation of the sentence you gave:
当市は複数の文明ーノルマン文明やギリシャ文明やフランス文明などーが住み着いたことのある歴史を持っています。
The tone got a bit more formal than your original sentence, but you get the idea.
The key thing to point out is that when translating, you should try searching for how ideas are expressed rather than word-equivalences. If you attempt the latter, you usually end up with awkward formulations or just end up making things more complicated than you need to.
Edit (2013/10/10):
Following Earthling's suggestion, the original translation,
当市は様々な国の人―ノルマン人やギリシャ人やフランス人など―を占めていた都市です。
was changed to better reflect the intent of the original sentence