Digital models recreate historic Istanbul’s buildings and streets. (Istanbul Time Machine / Marmara University)
Researchers in Türkiye are using artificial intelligence to reconstruct Ottoman Istanbul in three dimensions, linking newspaper reports with historical maps and archival records to reveal daily life beyond the city’s appearance.
Marmara University’s Istanbul Time Machine project brings together historians, AI specialists and data scientists at the Humanities DataLab within its Institute of Population and Social Research.
The team analyzes hundreds of thousands of pages from 1880 to 1940, including fires, accidents, theft and commerce reported in İkdam, Sabah, Tanin and Tercüman-ı Hakikat.
“The three-dimensional model was designed not just as a visual and virtual setting, but as an interface to historical data,” institute faculty member Dr. Fatma Aladağ said.
Users would explore virtual streets to learn about buildings, water shortages, shop openings, rents, lost property and entertainment, she said.
The team achieved 93 percent accuracy transcribing printed Ottoman Turkish and is developing models for rika and nesih scripts. It plans to share the tools with researchers as accuracy improves.
A 1919 advertisement offered lessons from a teacher from London on Yüksek Kaldırım, guaranteeing students could speak English after 30 lessons, priced at 30 kuruş. Other reports described paid phonograph listening in coffeehouses and a fight over a vendor tossing simits in Galata.
Still under development, the project aims to support virtual reality and gamified history rooms for public and educational use by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, municipalities, museums and heritage institutions, eventually extending to other cities.
Modeling starts with Eminönü in the early 1900s, a busy center of trade, transport and daily life often cited in newspapers. Reconstructions draw on visual and written archives and academic literature; the team plans to expand the areas modeled as it processes more reports.
