Since 1839, the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms had set out to restore past Ottoman grandeur using modern European models. Until the early 1860s, however, the Sublime Porte had primarily focused reform efforts on the center of the empire rather than the periphery. Significantly, it was Ottoman minority populations, as much as “outside enemies” that provoked the shift in the focus of Ottoman reform to the Danube region. As such, the so-called Tuna Vilayeti (Danube Province) was created in 1864 as a “pilot region,” with Ruse as its capital. Under the new provincial administration, a number of reforms were enacted with the goal of bringing stability to the region and better integrating different ethnic and religious groups, in particular Slavic-speaking Christians, into the Ottoman political system. As the provincial capital, Ruse and its hinterland became a central focus for experimental reforms, which brought many new institutions, and large-scale economic investments to the city and its environs. At the same time, Ruse’s economy had progressively developed with the new transportation and communication network, financial institutions, and commerce. The city itself went through urban reconstruction with wider streets and European architecture. It became, in a sense, a model city of the Tanzimat in the Balkans. Ruse flourished as an international port city where foreign merchants and residents engaged in commerce at local, regional and international levels. This paper examines the urban transformation of Ruse during the Ottoman provincial reforms, which ended with the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78.