Trouble brews beneath the exotically curved towers of Istanbul when the equally exotic - and equally curved - Elizabeth Lipp (Melina Mercouri) recruits her former lover (Maximilian Schell) in a scheme to heist the pride of the city's Topkapi Museum: a jewel-encrusted dagger. But the job soon turns into a high-tension high-wire performance - literally - when the bumbling fall guy (Peter Ustinov) and other amateurs they've hired as help find they'll have to lift their prize while dangling from the museum's vaulted ceiling!
