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Some 75 rare books from the collection of late Armenian oil magnate and art connoisseur Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian will go on display in Istanbul's Sakip Sabanci museum on Saturday.
The highlight of the exhibition is a 241-page prayer book that was printed on parchment in Italy at the end of the 13th century, the museum said, adding that its colours had withstood age well.
The books from the Gulbenkian collection will form part of an exhibition titled "The art of the book in the East and the West" that runs until May 28.
It features antique books from France, Iran, Japan and the Ottoman empire, but also more recent rare books such as illustrated copies of the works of Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac.
"We have never before mounted an exhibition of a such a combination of books from the East and the West. We wanted it to serve as a symbolic bridge between the two cultures of our founder," said the president of the board of the Gulbenkian Foundation, Emilio Rui Vilar.
Gulbenkian was born to Armenian parents in Istanbul. He spent many years in Portugal and died in 1955 in Lisbon, which is home to the Gulbenkian Museum.
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AFPEntertainment-Turkey-Portugal-culture-books
AFP 141732 GMT 04 06
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