'Since their first arrival in Europe as conquerors, the Turks have never failed to engage the curiosity of the Christian West; and long after they had ceased to be a hostile presence, their customs and institutions continued to attract the traveller and the adventurer...' The V&A's collection of images of the vast, sprawling Ottoman empire is unrivalled. Generations of European travellers - explorers, traders and tourists, naval and military personnel, scientists, artists, even political cartoonists - were drawn to these lands, and left records of what they saw there. Their paintings and drawings show a now largely vanished world. Whether bustling depictions of contemporary life in the street, the court and the harem, or elegiac evocations of the ruins of antiquity, the 100 images selected here, by artists from David Roberts and Edward Lear to John Frederick Lewis, bring this colourful world vividly to life and cannot fail to fascinate today's travellers.