As European and Ottoman archaeological research emerged and institutions and laws regarding the protection of antiquities developed in the nineteenth century, public interest in the past increased in Ottoman society. This paper explores the development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of the conceptions of cultural heritage amongst the diverse Ottoman peoples around the empire and their interactions with antiquities and historical sites. There is an emergent historiography of non-European/indigenous ways of interacting with and appreciating the material remains of the past. In some cases, this has a religious aspect, like protecting old religious manuscripts and visiting old churches, perhaps as a part of a pilgrimage. In others, the appreciation comes through European practices that pave the way to financial gain (both via tourism and trafficking). European collecting practices, both legal or illegal, also affected the Ottoman public’s perceptions of cultural heritage, especially late nineteenth century onwards. The Ottoman capital produced a lot of text and images of antiquities and ruins through popular journals like Servet-i Fünun and Şehbal, which discussed the issues of civilization and progress. Istanbul periodicals emphasize the importance of protecting the antiquities, including Islamic ones, and bemoan ongoing destruction and looting. However, we know much less about opinions on these topics by Ottoman peoples outside the capital. This paper focuses on non-state sources and provincial sources. It looks at the experiences of Ottoman Greeks, Armenians, and Arabs, mostly those who reside outside of the capital, and their interactions with Byzantine, ancient Armenian, and Mesopotamian antiquities as well as Classical and Biblical sites. This paper uses sources like the Arabic language journal Al-Muqtaṭaf which was published in Beirut and Cairo, an Armenian guestbook of the museum in Ani, and books in Greek published about the antiquities collections of Izmir and Tekirdağ. The paper asks what different approaches and ideas were produced about the empire’s antiquities and how different peoples positioned themselves vis-a-vis those antiquities. This paper therefore aims to contribute to the growing literature on Ottoman cultural heritage and indigenous ways in which to interact with the past. Using diverse sources from the different corners of the empire, it will also expand our knowledge about Ottoman perceptions of the past beyond those of elites in the capital city.