The Czars and the East. Gifts from Turkey and Iran in the Moscow Kremlin is the first exhibition in Europe to be dedicated especially to the Kremlin’s eastern collection.

This extraordinary group of works of art is unique among the world’s museum collections. It includes textiles, weapons, horse trappings, and jewels from Iran of the Safavid period, Ottoman Turkey and Russia and presents a selection of the most refined pieces created in the royal workshops of these countries between 16th and 17th centuries. The Islamic textile collection assembled by Calouste Gulbenkian comprises a considerable number of pieces of Iranian and Turkish origin from the which can be related to the textile collection of the Kremlin Armoury.

The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, profusely illustrated, contains individual studies of all the sixty six pieces on shown.