Schallaburg 2018 | Byzantium # 2019

The empire of Byzantium lasted for a thousand years, from the 5th to the 15th century. Strongly varying in size, it occupied the territory of the present-day Istanbul and the former Constantinople. Due to its excellent location on the Mediterranean Sea and as an intersection between today's Europe and the Orient, it was always contested. Byzantium was settled by Greeks, Armenians, Illyrians, Egyptians, Syrians, Slavs and (few) Jews, being the place, where different cultures, religions and civilisations met.

In 2018, Schallaburg Castle was recalling a fascinating story from the past. It is about prejudices and the thirst for knowledge, about greed and fascination, about two worlds that were so intimately interwoven and yet so far apart.

It is the story of Byzantium and the West. We navigate with pilgrims, merchants and crusaders, meet Charlemagne at his coronation in Rome, and accompany the Byzantine Princess Theodora on her way from Constantinople to Austria. The museum pieces from renowned collections such as the Paris Musée de Louvre, the Treasury of San Marco in Venice or the Israel Museum in Jerusalem make the exhibition “Byzantium & the West” a unique show in the history of Shallaburg Castle.