The city of two names

There are cities that change their name without losing their place in history. Constantinople, which became Istanbul, is one of them. For nearly seventeen centuries it served as the political, religious and cultural centre of different worlds, maintaining a continuity that few other places can claim. From 7 November 2026, London's Victoria and Albert Museum will explore this story in a major exhibition, Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires, the first exhibition in the United Kingdom to present the city's Byzantine and Ottoman histories as a single narrative. The idea behind the exhibition is simple yet unusual. Byzantine and Ottoman artistic production are generally presented as separate chapters, divided by the conquest of 1453. Instead, the V&A focuses on the city's long continuity, tracing the transformations of power, artistic expression and everyday life from AD 330, when Constantine refounded the city, to 1922, the end of the Ottoman Empire. More than 200 works from the V&A's collections and major international lenders will accompany visitors on this journey. Loans come from institutions including the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art in Istanbul, the Sadberk Hanım Museum, the Benaki Museum in Athens, the Treasury of San Marco in Venice, the British Museum and the British Library. Many of the objects will be shown in the United Kingdom for the first time. The exhibition opens with the emergence of the new Roman capital on the Bosphorus. Thanks to its strategic position between Europe and Asia, Constantinople quickly became one of the Mediterranean's principal commercial and political hubs. Mosaics, carved ivories, cameos and architectural fragments tell the story of a city built to project imperial authority. Particular attention is given to the Hippodrome, where the famous chariot races took place and where the emperor's power was transformed into public spectacle. The second section explores the relationship between art and religion in the Byzantine world. At its centre stands Hagia Sophia, arguably the most influential building in the history of Late Antique and medieval architecture. Reliquaries, icons, illuminated manuscripts and liturgical objects demonstrate how the visual language of faith was inseparable from the construction of political authority. Among the exhibition's highlights is a rare eleventh-century Byzantine triptych made of cloisonné enamel and gold, designed to be worn around the neck. The small object depicts a court dignitary kneeling at the feet of Christ and bears witness to the extraordinary skill of Constantinople's goldsmiths. Also on display will be the Lincoln Typikon, an exceptional fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript from Lincoln College, Oxford, shown to the public for the first time in more than sixty years. The Ottoman conquest of 1453 introduced a new chapter in the city's history but did not interrupt Istanbul's role as an imperial capital. The exhibition's third section examines how the sultans used art, luxury and public ceremony to project authority. Ceramics, armour, textiles, jewellery and courtly objects reveal a visual culture built around dynastic magnificence. Among the announced masterpieces is the celebrated Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II painted in 1479 by Gentile Bellini. Now in the collection of the National Gallery in London, the painting has undergone significant alterations and overpainting over the centuries, partially changing its original appearance. Despite these transformations, it remains one of the most powerful symbols of the encounter between Venetian Renaissance culture and the Ottoman court. It will be displayed alongside an ivory jewelled belt from the tomb of Sultan Selim II, a sumptuous velvet and silver-thread horse cover used in imperial processions, and a remarkable seventeenth-century illustrated scroll documenting an Ottoman court ceremony in extraordinary detail. The final section shifts the focus to the city itself. Not only an imperial capital, but a cosmopolitan metropolis inhabited by communities of different languages, religions and origins. Through musical instruments, clothing, domestic objects and evidence of urban life, the narrative moves from the halls of power to the streets, coffee houses, markets and hammams that shaped daily life for centuries. The exhibition concludes by examining the influence of Byzantine and Ottoman art on nineteenth-century Europe. Drawings, textiles and decorative designs reveal how artists and designers looked to Istanbul as an inexhaustible source of forms, colours and ornamental motifs. It is a story of exchange that, far beyond politics and warfare, helped shape the artistic identity of the Mediterranean.