With hopes of changing 'prejudices' Istanbul's glories visit Paris

A visitor looks on two Simurgh relief, a mythical medieval creature, at the exhibition from Byzantium to Istanbul at the Grand Palais in Paris. Photo / AP

From white marble statues of Greek and Roman gods to gleaming medieval Christian icons to a huge red Ottoman tent, an exhibition devoted to Istanbul seeks to expand French awareness of the city's multicultural heritage in a country deeply sceptical of Turkey's European aspirations.

Some 300 works of art from museums in 14 countries in Europe, Turkey and Qatar cap two years of work to create the exhibit "From Byzantium to Istanbul" at the Grand Palais.

It is the first time many of the pieces from Turkish museums have ever left their country of origin.

Bathed in subdued red light, the exhibition takes the visitor through 8,000 years of history of the "city of a hundred names" known as Byzantium, then Constantinople and now Istanbul.

It focuses on its role linking Europe and Asia as "one port for two continents."

The exhibition, opened this month by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, is the centrepiece of the "Year of Turkey," which involves some 400 Turkish cultural events over nine months offering everyone a chance to become better acquainted with Turkey's culture.

"(Istanbul) always has been a multicultural city, with many different languages, ethnicities, religions," said Nazan Olcer, director of the Sakip Sanci Museum in Istanbul and curator of the exhibition.

"I wanted to bring also this colourful face of the city to the exhibition. Maybe, you know, you cannot change all the prejudices with one exhibition only, but at least you can try to open a window to the visitor, to ask him to think differently," she told The Associated Press in an interview.

Olcer says she has collaborated on many international exhibitions that included art from Turkey.

Some had focused just on Ottoman art, some on different periods of Turkish art and sometimes just one period of the Turks.

The decision to extend the time span and to focus on Istanbul gives the visitor insight into the array of cultures that have shaped the city, as well as its major role as capital of the Christian Byzantine and the Islamic Ottoman empires.

"The strategy was this. We all are sometimes tending to simplify many things. If Byzantium was a Christian capital, so we think it's been only a Christian capital. If we say after the conquest, after the fall, all of a sudden it has become an Islamic capital. No. It was not like this. Istanbul has been always a multicultural city," she said.