Constantinople to Istanbul V&A Exhibition Puts 1,600 Years of One City in Two Galleries

One city. Two empires. Sixteen centuries of people making beautiful things to pray with, rule with and drink coffee from. The Constantinople to Istanbul V&A exhibition opens at V&A South Kensington on Saturday 7 November 2026, and the museum calls it a UK first: no British show has previously told the full story of the city as capital of both the Byzantine empire (AD 330–1453) and the Ottoman empire (1453–1922) in a single exhibition (V&A; News on Media). It runs in Galleries 38 and 39 until 9 May 2027 (Turkey Daily News).

What the Constantinople to Istanbul V&A exhibition actually contains

More than 200 objects, dating from AD 330 to 1922: fine silks and textiles, ceramic tiles, mosaics, tableware, metalwork and jewellery, sculpture, architectural furnishings, works on paper, manuscripts and paintings (IRK Magazine). Many are on display in the UK for the first time, and the loans reach well beyond the V&A’s own stores — Turkish institutions including the Topkapi Palace Museum are among the lenders (News on Media).

The show is curated by Tim Stanley, the V&A’s senior curator for the Middle East, with project curator Bella Radenović, a Byzantine specialist; the pair also worked on the accompanying book with Antony Eastmond of the Courtauld Institute (IRK Magazine). It is organised in partnership with Koç Holding, with support from the Huo Family Foundation (Turkey Daily News).

Four sections carry the argument. “Grand Beginnings” starts with the city’s refounding around AD 330 as capital of a reunified Roman empire, through mosaics, architectural fragments, cameos and carved ivories evoking the Hippodrome (News on Media). “Heaven on Earth” turns to worship and to Hagia Sophia, built under the emperor Justinian in the sixth century and converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of 1453 (News on Media). “Power and Reach” examines how the Ottoman court projected authority in peace and war through spectacle. “Life in the City” lands in the 19th century, in a cosmopolitan port of many languages and faiths — coffeehouses, hammams, trade along the Bosphorus (Turkey Daily News; News on Media).

V&A Istanbul exhibition highlights, from ivory caskets to a sultan’s portrait

The V&A Istanbul exhibition highlights reward close looking rather than sheer scale. The Veroli Casket, a 10th-century Byzantine ivory box carved with scenes from classical mythology, sits near the Enkolpion of Constantinos, an 11th-century gold and enamel pendant reliquary made for a court official (Turkey Daily News). A velvet covering woven in Bursa in the second half of the 16th century, lent from Athens, shows Ottoman textile work at its most sumptuous (V&A).

Paper does quieter work. A 17th-century Ottoman processional scroll, lent by the John Rylands Research Institute and Library in Manchester, supplies the exhibition’s header image (V&A). The Lincoln Typikon, a 14th-century illustrated manuscript from the Convent of the Virgin of Sure Hope, lent by Lincoln College, Oxford, goes on public display for the first time in six decades (News on Media). IRK’s preview also singles out a portrait of Sultan Mehmed II painted in 1479 by the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini, and a long-necked lute, a tanbur from around 1750, inlaid with ivory, tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl (IRK Magazine).

Then the everyday objects pull you back to street level: a silver-gilt coffee pot from the first half of the 19th century, a watercolour from around 1809 of the sultan riding out to Friday prayers, painted by an anonymous Greek artist (V&A). Osman Hamdi Bey’s 1887 painting Ladies Taking a Walk closes the Ottoman story with a modern eye — Hamdi Bey was a painter and archaeologist who founded what is now the Istanbul Archaeological Museums (Turkey Daily News).

A Byzantine and Ottoman art exhibition London has not tried before

Why has nobody done this in Britain until now? Partly because the material lives in two different scholarly worlds. Byzantine art and Ottoman art are usually taught, collected and exhibited apart, even though the city itself never stopped — it changed rulers, faiths and languages while workshops kept working. The exhibition’s wager is that the objects make more sense in sequence: the same streets, the same craft traditions adapting, patrons swapping crosses for calligraphy and back again in the details. The final section follows the influence outward, into 19th-century European design, with work by Owen Jones and William Morris drawn from the V&A’s own collection (IRK Magazine).

Analysis: this is also a V&A show about the V&A. The museum’s holdings were built by Victorian collectors who admired exactly this material and mined it for British design reform, so putting Owen Jones beside Iznik tiles is not a coda — it is the home collection explaining where some of its own taste came from. Judged as programming, the risk is sprawl: 1,600 years is a lot to ask of two galleries. The object list suggests the curators know it, and have bet on density of quality over monument-sized spectacle.

Practicalities, briefly. The exhibition is at V&A South Kensington on Cromwell Road, Galleries 38 and 39, from 7 November 2026 to 9 May 2027. Standard tickets cost £25 on weekdays and £27 at weekends, concessions apply, members go free, and the museum recommends booking in advance (V&A). Sixteen centuries, two empires, one £25 ticket. On a cost-per-century basis, it may be the best-value show in London this winter.

Photo: Arild Vågen, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sources

1. https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/constantinople-to-istanbul-one-city-two-empires
2. https://www.irkmagazine.com/post/constantinople-to-istanbul-one-city-two-empires/
3. https://turkeydailynews.com/va-london-constantinople-to-istanbul-exhibition-nov-7-2026/
4. https://newsonmedia.com/victoria-and-albert-museum-to-bring-istanbul-to-london-in-upcoming-exhibition/