Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Arab World Institute Partner for Baghdad Exhibition

Assassin's Creed Mirage's setting of ninth-century Baghdad is a recreation of a lost city. The Abbasid Empire-era city no longer stands, but is now the subject of an exhibition at the Arab World Institute (IMA) titled Baghdad: A Journey Back to Madinat al-Salam, with Assassin's Creed Mirage, running now through November 10. While past Assassin's Creed games have been featured in other museum experiences (the British Library in London, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens), this collaboration marks the first time Ubisoft has co-created an exhibit based exclusively on the content of a game.

"Co-creating the exhibition with the Ubisoft team was intellectually enriching as it merged two different but complementary visions: Ubisoft's focus on imagery and the Arab World Institute's curation of art objects created a compelling dialogue between the physical and digital realms," says Director of the Arab World Institute and exhibition curator, Eric Delpont.

Dedicated entirely to the city of Baghdad during the Abbasid Empire, the exhibit aims to highlight the city as a political, scientific, cultural, and commercial capital before it was destroyed by the Mongols in 1258. Visitors will be able to see a wide variety of content from Assassin's Creed Mirage, including concept art, screenshots, audio and video excerpts, and interviews with members of the development team.

"In the absence of significant archaeological remains, it is the chronicles of historians and the accounts of travelers of all origins that have preserved the memory of [Baghdad's] magnificence," says IMA President Jack Lang. "In addition to the historical expertise of our curators and pieces from the museum's collections, the exhibition is based on the content of the Assassin's Creed Mirage videogame. When all combined together, these historical and videogame elements bring a vanished city back to life."

This is not the first collaboration between Assassin's Creed Mirage and the IMA. Mirage's History of Baghdad feature brought real history into the game world by allowing players to read about and view real objects from history, three of which came from the IMA and are on view in the exhibition. When the game launched in October 2023, it entered the museum's permanent collection, thanks to a short in-game film specially created by Ubisoft to showcase historical sites in Baghdad.

"Without Assassin's Creed Mirage, there probably wouldn't have been an exhibition about the Abbasid Baghdad in our museum," says Delpont. "Indeed, until now, there were no sufficiently advanced and detailed reconstructions of the city that we could use to dedicate an exhibition to the Round City. Mirage changed that."

If you want to explore ninth-century Baghdad for yourself, pick up Assassin's Creed Mirage on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC (via the Ubisoft Store and Epic Games Store), Amazon Luna, and iOS, or with a Ubisoft+ premium subscription, and be sure to read about how Assassin's Creed Mirage built an authentic Baghdad.