  Designing photonic topological insulators is highly non-trivial because it
requires inversion of band symmetries around the band gap, which was so far
done using intuition combined with meticulous trial and error. Here we take a
completely different approach: we consider the design of photonic topological
insulators as an inverse design problem and use topology optimization to
maximize the transmission through an edge mode with a sharp bend. Two design
domains composed of two different, but initially identical,
C$_\text{6v}$-symmetric unit cells define the geometrical design problem.
Remarkably, the optimization results in a photonic topological insulator
reminiscent of the shrink-and-grow approach to quantum-spin-Hall photonic
topological insulators but with notable differences in the topology of the
crystal as well as qualitatively different band structures and with
significantly improved performance as gauged by the band-gap sizes, which are
at least 50 \% larger than previous designs. Furthermore, we find a directional
beta factor exceeding 99 \%, and very low losses for sharp bends. Our approach
allows for the introduction of fabrication limitations by design and opens an
avenue towards designing PTIs with hitherto unexplored symmetry constraints.
