A forthcoming blockbuster exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum focused on the history of Istanbul is a “UK-first”, according to a museum statement.
Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires (7 November 2026-9 May 2027) will include more than 200 objects including ceramic tiles, mosaics and tableware, metalwork and jewellery on loan from Turkish institutions such as the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul.
A V&A spokesperson says: “It’s the first UK show to bring together the full 1,600-year story of the city as capital of both Byzantine (AD 330–1453) and Ottoman (1453–1922) empires, with a focus on the remarkable art and culture that shaped this period of time.”
The main exhibition sponsor is Koç Group, Turkey’s largest industrial group. The Koç family is the country’s most influential and prominent arts patron; Omer Koc, one of three grandsons of the company’s founder Vehbi Koç, collects antiquities and contemporary art.
“Uncensored art is indispensable to real democracies,” he told The New York Times in 2019 amid free speech concerns in the Turkish art scene and wider society under the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Arter, one of Turkey’s leading contemporary art non-profits, is backed by the Vehbi Koç Foundation; the Arter contemporary art museum opened in the Dolapdere district of Istanbul in 2019. Koç Group is also the main sponsor of the city's biennial.
Located at its flagship South Kensington museum, the V&A show will be divided into four sections: “Grand Beginnings” focuses on the emergence of the city during the Roman Empire around 330 AD, featuring “mosaics and architectural fragments from early palaces and churches of the city; fine cameos of semi-precious stones and carved ivories showing the Hippodrome and its rituals; and western manuscripts showing the city just before and after the 1453 conquest”, says a statement.
The second section, “Heaven on Earth”, explores places of worship such as Byzantine churches, outlining the development of the Hagia Sophia which was built under the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the sixth century. After the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453, the cathedral was converted into a mosque.
“Power and Reach” will examine how the Ottoman court projected authority in peace and war through visual spectacle,” says a statement. The final part, “Life in the City”, shifts the focus to the 19th century, highlighting the rise of the Turkish metropolis as a cosmopolitan centre encompassing diverse languages, faiths and artistic traditions.
Key loans include the Lincoln Typikon, an illustrated 14th-century manuscript of the Convent of the Virgin of Sure Hope from Lincoln College, Oxford which will go on public display for the first time in six decades. The exhibition has been curated by senior curator Tim Stanley and project curator Bella Radenovic.