conference

The prehistory of Ottoman museology

Visitors, tourists, monuments and collections in Istanbul, 1800-1870

19.04.2023

BANNER_1000x700_LM2023_Gli ottomani e il passato mediterraneo_VF (1)

Wednesday April 19, 2023, 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Event organized by theÉcole Française de Rome at Villa Medici
Lecture in French, simultaneous translation in Italian

Free admission on reservation.

Please consider cancelling your reservation if you no longer wish to take part, so that other people can attend the event.

For the seventh edition of Lectures méditerranéennes, the French School of Rome invites Edhem Eldem, professor at the University of the Bosphorus, Istanbul, for a series of lectures entitled The Ottomans and the Mediterranean past: narratives, legacies, heritage.

As part of this cycle, the Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis, offers a lecture entitled The prehistory of Ottoman museology: visitors, tours, monuments and collections in Istanbul, 1800-1870..

Constantinople has always been a focal point for the curiosity of Western travellers, who discovered both the antiquities of the Byzantine past and the mysteries and exoticism of an Oriental capital. As the 19th century progressed, the number of such visitors increased dramatically, while their profile diversified: aristocrats, antiquarians, diplomats, artists, novelists, officers, dilettantes and, above all, ordinary tourists attracted by an increasingly accessible Orient. In addition to accounts and other Western sources documenting the personal experiences of these travelers, Ottoman archives preserve thousands of petitions requesting permission to visit monuments and museums. These archives reveal the extent to which this European curiosity contributed to the development of an Ottoman museology that attempted to meet Western scientific standards while satisfying the exotic expectations of visiting foreigners. The conference will retrace the major stages in the birth of Ottoman museology.

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