Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires

The same city was the capital of two empires for sixteen hundred years. Constantine made it the eastern seat of Rome in 330; it became the centre of Byzantine Christianity, was sacked by crusaders who were supposed to be on its side, and fell to Mehmed II in 1453, after which it was the Ottoman capital until 1922. Very few places have been the most important city in the world twice, under two religions, and almost none have kept making things of that quality throughout.

The V&A’s case is that the art is continuous rather than interrupted — that the craftsmen did not stop in 1453, and the Ottoman objects carry the Byzantine ones inside them. The V&A’s Islamic and Byzantine holdings have historically sat in different departments and different galleries, which is exactly the division the exhibition is arguing against.

It opens at V&A South Kensington on Saturday 7 November 2026 in Galleries 38 and 39, spanning more than a millennium: a tenth-century Byzantine ivory casket with pagan scenes on it, an eleventh-century enkolpion, an Ottoman processional scroll, an eighteenth-century long-necked tambur. A closing date and a ticket price are both listed as available soon. It opens the week before the museum’s Schiaparelli show closes and is the first of five exhibitions the V&A has announced across South Kensington and Stratford.