sonovia
We have a dual mission:
give you access to excellent audio tours
and empower you to create your own!
We have a dual mission:
give you access to excellent audio tours
and empower you to create your own!
sono·via
a journey guided entirely by sound
It’s like an audio tour—but forget the museum handset and its numbered buttons.
Simply relax and let the narration guide you along.
Audio tracks are pinned to locations. Walk up, and the narration begins.
The narration helps you navigate and find landmarks. If you wander, it gently brings you back on track.
There’s a map on your screen, but you’ll rarely need it. Phone in pocket, your surroundings are your focus.
All you need is your phone!
sonovia studio is also available online, so you can work on your tour on a laptop
To establish a living cultural archive of place-based stories.To inspire people to contribute their perspective by creating unique tours.
We seek stories from local voices and lived experiences alongside the expertise of professionals, sharing the diverse ways in which places gain and hold meaning.
We share our proceeds equitably with tour creators through a transparent online portal.
Our technology enables stories to chime in your ear at exactly the right time, at exactly the right place.
Our story began in 1980s Istanbul, with two childhood friends playing soccer beneath walnut and mulberry trees.
Years later, our paths took different directions. One of us became a software engineer, visited forty-nine countries, and whenever work left a few free hours, tried to experience each destination not as a tourist, but as someone who truly lived there. The other became a professional tour guide, sharing the stories of cities with thousands of people across the world—from Türkiye to France, from Brazil to Japan.
About ten years ago, when one of us moved to the United States and began exploring the rhythms, culture, and overlooked details of a new home, he realized something unexpected: despite having spent forty-five years there, he had never truly discovered Istanbul. Meanwhile, the other hoped that the knowledge and experience accumulated over more than four decades would no longer be confined to a few hours of guided tours, but could reach people everywhere and be passed on to future generations.
Years later, our paths crossed again in an Istanbul that had become very different from the one we remembered. We saw that it wasn’t only the buildings that had changed—shops, neighbors, everyday traditions, and countless small stories that gave those places meaning had quietly disappeared as well.
Sonovia was born from that realization.
We wanted to build a living cultural archive where people could preserve the places they know and love in their own voice and from their own perspective. Because our surroundings are more than buildings, streets, and squares. They are shaped by the events that unfolded there, the people who lived them, and the storytellers who have devoted themselves to understanding them.
The spirit of a place may be found in a childhood memory. Or in a historian’s years of research. In the wisdom a tour guide has refined over decades. Or in the perspective of an architect, a fisherman, or a neighbor who has spent a lifetime on the same streets. What they all have in common is this: they are told by people who truly know that place.
Today, artificial intelligence can generate endless amounts of content in seconds. But no AI can tell the story of a place with the voice, the emphasis, and the lived experience of an authentic storyteller.
If you want to tell the story of a place—or discover it through someone else’s eyes—we invite you to join Sonovia.
We believe that every new story becomes another piece of a living cultural archive, growing one place at a time, all around the world.