The Victoria and Albert Museum has opened Constantinople to Istanbul, a landmark exhibition that reconstructs 1,600 years of the city that stood at the meeting point of Europe and Asia. The show opened on 7 November and traces the imperial city from its Byzantine beginnings to its Ottoman centuries.

The exhibition brings together treasures from across those 1,600 years, showing how the city changed hands, faiths and names while remaining a centre of art, trade and power. Objects from Byzantine and Ottoman times sit side by side, telling the story of a place that was at different moments the capital of empires and the crossroads of the world.

The show was first announced in June, but its opening is the moment the public can finally walk through the story it tells. For the V&A, it is one of the most ambitious historical exhibitions of the year, asking visitors to think about a city whose past is still visible in its streets, mosques and palaces.

Constantinople to Istanbul also arrives at a moment when the city's history feels newly present in public debate, from the politics of heritage to the way empires are remembered. The exhibition offers a chance to see that history through objects rather than argument, and to follow a single city across sixteen centuries of change. The exhibition is the V&A's major historical show of the autumn, and it draws on loans from museums and collections around the world. Its opening weekend is expected to draw large crowds, as visitors come to see a city that has fascinated travellers, writers and artists for centuries.