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Unicorns, Tulips & Hagia Sophia

17.01.2025
Artificial intelligence makes thousands of images of historical travel reports searchable
 

Northwest view of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul from a 19th-century English travelogue. Source: Edward Daniel Clarke, Travels In Various Countries Of Europe Asia And Africa: Part The Second : Greece Egypt And The Holy Land  [...], London: Printed For T. Cadell And W. Davies Strand By R. Watts 1816, p. 480, http://data.onb.ac.at/ABO/%2BZ137224902, © ÖNB.

A new web portal invites users to take a stroll through centuries-old prints about the Ottoman Empire. More than 22,000 images are being made freely available to the public in a collaboration between the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and the Austrian National Library (ÖNB) with the help of artificial intelligence and funding from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). 

The Ottoman Empire was one of the most popular destinations for European travelers in the modern era. What interested these people on their travels, what they got to see and what they merely imagined, they often captured in elaborate pictorial representations. Insights into this multifaceted world will be available from January 20 in a new, freely accessible interdisciplinary web application: The so-called ONiT Explorer makes over 22,000 images from around 2,000 travelogues, printed between 1501 and 1850 and preserved in German, English, French and Latin in the Austrian National Library (ÖNB), freely available and searchable. 

The pictorial evidence was compiled and prepared by a team from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and the ÖNB using artificial intelligence as part of the project “Ottoman Nature in Travelogues, 1501-1850: A Digital Analysis” (ONiT), which was funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF.

Please read the full article (Original in German) here.