The artworks explore Istanbul — the city itself as well as its citizens, its history, and its present — as seen in works by artists from the 16th century onwards, including Bernardino Campi, Jacopo Ligozzi, Nicolas Rycks, Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, Jean-Etienne Liotard, Antoine Ignace Melling, Francesco Hayez, John Frederick Lewis, Walter Gould, Alberto Pasini, Germain Fabius Brest, Oskar Kokoschka and Nikolai Kalmiko.
The works displayed are from the collection of the Lusail Museum (formerly known as the Orientalist Museum) as well as the Rijksmuseum and other major private collections in the UK and the Netherlands.