90,000 documents from the BİLGİ Silahtarağa Archive collection will be accessible on Gallica, the digital library of the National Library of France

İstanbul Bilgi University Silahtarağa Archive, the National Library of France’s (BnF) sole university partner in Türkiye since 2023, has been integrating its digital library into Gallica, the BnF’s digital platform, making a selection from its collection available to researchers.

The Silahtarağa Archive holds a significant collection of over 2 million documents related to the Silahtarağa Power Plant—the Ottoman Empire’s first city-scale electricity plant—preserving an important record of Istanbul’s urban history and industrial heritage. Divided into 41 categories, this extensive collection consists mainly of architectural and technical drawings, as well as correspondence, magazines, reports, and photographs, written primarily in Ottoman Turkish, Turkish, French, German, and English. The Silahtarağa Archive will make nearly 90,000 documents from six specially selected categories available to the public through its integration with the Gallica digital library, and has already made its first selection of 12,000 documents accessible.

The documents provide researchers with the opportunity to examine the city's modernization and urbanization process, capital transformation, and industrialization steps in sociological, economic, and ecological terms, given Istanbul's special position in the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Türkiye.

You can access the first selection from the Silahtarağa Archive collection through the Silahtarağa Digital Archive and Gallica web pages, and follow announcements about the documents to be added via the Silahtarağa Archive’s social media accounts and website.