The Ottoman Empire was a popular travel destination for Europeans from the 16th century onwards. A new image database, the ONiT-Explorer, makes historical travel reports and 22,000 images from the period between 1501 and 1850 accessible. The journeys were made for a variety of reasons - from research and trade to medical treatment or pleasure. While wealthy men were the main authors in the beginning, women and people from lower classes also wrote reports later on. Images were often created later by artists and were sometimes reused. Today, the ONiT-Explorer enables a virtual journey through the Ottoman Empire.
The ONiT (Ottoman Nature in Travelogues) project is a collaboration between the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and the Austrian National Library (ÖNB). A special feature of this project is the targeted use of artificial intelligence (AI), the technology for which was developed in collaboration with experts from the Center for Digital Safety & Security.
Read the full National Geographic article here.