The Rålamb embassy to Turkey in 1657-1658 and the Rålamb collection of paintings A research project at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul headed by Assoc. professor Karin Ådahl, director of the Institute. Project sponsored by AstraZeneca Turkey. In 1657 Claes Brorsson Rålamb was sent to Constantinople by the Swedish king Charles X Gustaf as ambassador ad hoc to act as a mediator between the Swedish king and the Ottoman Sultan in the then troublesome relations between the Ottoman empire, Poland , Russia , Transylvania and Sweden . Rålamb was an advisor to the king and a man of high political stature in Sweden as a jurist and parlamentarian. Rålamb arrived in Constantinople in May 1657 and stayed until January 1658.His mission was unsuccessful due to diplomatic failure but also because of a change in the political situation and the relations between the Sublime Porte and its neighbouring powers. In connection with his mission to the Constantinople Rålamb commissioned twenty paintings in large size depicting a parade of the Sultan and his courtiers through the streets of Constantinople . The twenty paintings, now in need of conservation, are painted in oil painting on canvas, the total of the twenty paintings measuring approx. 33 meters in length. Each painting has a white, painted label explaining in Swedish the persons seen in the picture. During Rålamb´s lifetime the twenty paintings were kept in one of his manor houses in Sweden . Since 1939 fifteen paintings are deposited in the Nordic Museum in Stockholm , the additional five paintings were later bought by the museum to make the collection complete. The Rålamb paintings are unique documents from 17th century Constantinople, there are no paintings with this motif from the period in any collection in Turkey nor in other collections in the world. The artist is not known, but it could be assumed that the paintings were commis- sioned from a European artist working in Constantinople. In the Rålamb collection there is also a small book with 121 paintings in water colours in small size, of Ottoman-Turkish men and women. A few albums of this kind are known in other collections in Europe and were probably sold to foreigners on the market in Constantinople . The artist is not known. The album is kept by the Royal Library in Stockholm . The issue of the present project is the scholarly analysis of the twenty paintings in the Nordic Museum and to make a study of the tradition of costume albums of Ottoman subjects, serving as information or souvenirs to foreigners and particularly diplomats in Constantinople . The Rålamb paintings as well as the costume album have been published in a volume edited by Karin Ådahl in conncestion with the first exhibition of the paintings outside Sweden (at the Pera Museum June-October 2006).