Swiss Cultural Heritage MCP Server

🇨🇭 Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

🏛️ swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp

MCP Server for Swiss cultural heritage — SIK-ISEA artists, Nationalmuseum collections, and the Nationalbibliothek bibliography

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

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Overview

swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp provides AI-native access to Swiss cultural heritage data sources, all without authentication:

This server completes the humanistic dimension of the Swiss public data portfolio — history, literature, and art — alongside existing servers for law (fedlex-mcp), transport, statistics, and more.

The memory-institution facade (Memobase + Dodis) is exposed through three federated tools — search_heritage, get_heritage_item, list_heritage_collections — rather than one tool-family per source. Every result carries source, permalink and licence, and the licence is reported separately for metadata and for the digitised object (they diverge: metadata is open Linked Open Data, but a digitised object may be In Copyright). Only metadata and links are returned — copyright-protected full texts (e.g. Dodis transcriptions) are never reproduced.

Anchor demo query (art): "Find works by Zurich-based painters from the 19th century in the Nationalmuseum, and cross-reference with their biography in the SIK-ISEA artist database."

Anchor demo query (memory institutions): "Which sources on the development of the Zurich Volksschule in the 19th century can be found in the Swiss memory institutions?" → search_heritage(query="Volksschule Zürich", collection="all", date_from="1800", date_to="1899").

Demo

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Features

• 🏛️ 11 tools, 2 resources, 2 prompts across five data sources
• 🔍 heritage_cross_search — parallel search across SIK-ISEA + SNM + NB in a single call
• 🏛️ search_heritage — federated facade over Memobase + Dodis with per-result source, permalink and split metadata/digitised-object licence
• 🌐 Bilingual output (Markdown / JSON)
• 🔓 No API key required — all data under open licenses
• ☁️ Dual transport — stdio (Claude Desktop) + Streamable HTTP (cloud)
• 📚 Prompt templates for art research and finding educational materials

Project phase: Phase 1 — read-only. Every tool is annotated readOnlyHint: true; there are no write or destructive operations. Moving to Phase 2 (write-capable) requires the prerequisites in docs/roadmap.md.

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Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• uv (recommended) or pip

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Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/malkreide/swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp.git
cd swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp

# Install
pip install -e .
# or with uv:
uv pip install -e .

Or with uvx (no permanent installation):

uvx swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp

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Quickstart

# stdio (for Claude Desktop)
python -m swiss_cultural_heritage_mcp.server

# Streamable HTTP (port 8000)
python -m swiss_cultural_heritage_mcp.server --http --port 8000

Try it immediately in Claude Desktop:

"Who is Ferdinand Hodler?" "What coins does the Nationalmuseum have from Zurich?" "Find publications about Volksschule in the Swiss national bibliography"

→ More use cases by audience →

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Configuration

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "swiss-cultural-heritage": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "swiss_cultural_heritage_mcp.server"]
    }
  }
}

Or with uvx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "swiss-cultural-heritage": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Config file locations:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Cloud Deployment (SSE for browser access)

For use via claude.ai in the browser (e.g. on managed workstations without local software):

Render.com (recommended):

1. Push/fork the repository to GitHub
2. On render.com: New Web Service → connect GitHub repo
3. Select region Frankfurt (EU) — required for Swiss public-sector use under revDSG / EDÖB. See docs/data-residency.md.
4. Set start command: python -m swiss_cultural_heritage_mcp.server --http --port 8000
5. In claude.ai under Settings → MCP Servers, add: https://your-app.onrender.com/sse

💡 "stdio for the developer laptop, SSE for the browser."

For container deployments (Docker / Kubernetes / Cloud Run): the repository ships a hardened Dockerfile (non-root UID 10001). See docs/security.md for recommended SecurityContext and docs/network-egress.md for egress policy. The service runs single-instance by default; before scaling horizontally, see docs/scaling.md for the session-affinity prerequisites.

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Available Tools

SIK-ISEA (Swiss Art Research)

Nationalmuseum (SNM)

Nationalbibliothek (NB)

Cross-Source

Memory institutions (Memobase + Dodis) — federated facade

Example Use Cases

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Architecture

┌─────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────────┐
│   Claude / AI   │────▶│  Swiss Cultural Heritage MCP  │────▶│  SIK-ISEA                │
│   (MCP Host)    │◀────│  (MCP Server)                │◀────│  opendata.swiss / CKAN   │
└─────────────────┘     │                              │     ├──────────────────────────┤
                        │  11 Tools · 2 Resources      │────▶│  Nationalmuseum (SNM)    │
                        │  2 Prompts                   │◀────│  opendata.swiss / CKAN   │
                        │  Stdio | SSE                 │     ├──────────────────────────┤
                        │                              │────▶│  Nationalbibliothek (NB) │
                        │  No authentication required  │◀────│  OAI-PMH (Helveticat)    │
                        │                              │     ├──────────────────────────┤
                        │  search_heritage facade      │────▶│  Memobase (JSON-LD/Hydra)│
                        │                              │◀────│  Dodis (JSON-REST/Solr)  │
                        └──────────────────────────────┘     └──────────────────────────┘

Data Source Characteristics

Architecture decision — memory-institution facade

Verified by a live probe on 2026-07-19 (methodology: mcp-data-source-probe). Four memory institutions were evaluated; only two expose a clean, no-auth, standardised interface and are connected:

Consequences: three federated tools instead of four tool-families; every result carries source + permalink + a split metadata/digitised-object licence; no copyright-protected full text is reproduced (metadata + links only); bar and landesmuseum are documented as gated via list_heritage_collections, not scraped.

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Project Structure

swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp/
├── src/swiss_cultural_heritage_mcp/
│   ├── __init__.py              # Package
│   └── server.py                # 11 tools, 2 resources, 2 prompts
├── tests/
│   └── test_server.py           # Unit + integration tests (mocked HTTP)
├── .github/workflows/ci.yml     # GitHub Actions (Python 3.11/3.12/3.13)
├── .github/dependabot.yml       # Monthly dependency + SDK update PRs
├── Dockerfile                   # Multi-stage, non-root, HEALTHCHECK
├── docs/                        # security, network-egress, scaling, data-residency, roadmap
├── pyproject.toml
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
├── LICENSE
├── README.md                    # This file (English)
└── README.de.md                 # German version

Single-file server: the 11 tools live in one server.py rather than a tools/ package. At this size a single, linear module is easier to read and review than a split; if the tool count grows materially, the SIK-ISEA / SNM / NB / cross-search blocks are the natural split points.

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Safety & Limits

• Read-only: All tools perform HTTP GET requests only — no data is written, modified, or deleted.
• No personal data: The APIs return institutional records (artworks, publications, artists). No personally identifiable information (PII) is processed or stored by this server.
• Rate limits: The opendata.swiss and OAI-PMH endpoints are not rate-limit-documented; use limit parameters conservatively. The server enforces a 30s timeout per request.
• Data freshness: Records reflect the upstream source at query time. No caching is performed by this server.
• Terms of service: Data is subject to the ToS of each source — SIK-ISEA, opendata.swiss, Nationalbibliothek OAI-PMH. All data is published under open licenses (CC0 / CC BY).
• No guarantees: This server is a community project, not affiliated with SIK-ISEA, SNM, or NB. Availability depends on upstream APIs.

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Known Limitations

• SIK-ISEA: Artist data is updated periodically; very recent acquisitions may not yet be reflected
• Nationalmuseum: Only datasets published on opendata.swiss are accessible; not all SNM collections are available
• Nationalbibliothek: OAI-PMH harvesting is rate-limited; large result sets require pagination
• Cross-search: Response time depends on the slowest of the three sources

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Testing

# Unit tests (no API key required)
PYTHONPATH=src pytest tests/ -m "not live"

# Integration tests (live API calls)
pytest tests/ -m "live"

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MCP Protocol Version

The official mcp SDK negotiates the protocol version during initialize; this server does not override it. Pin the SDK (not a hand-rolled version string) to control which protocol version is spoken.

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Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md

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License

MIT License — see LICENSE

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Author

Hayal Oezkan · malkreide

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Credits & Related Projects

• SIK-ISEA: www.sik-isea.ch — Swiss Institute for Art Research
• Nationalmuseum: www.nationalmuseum.ch / opendata.swiss
• Nationalbibliothek: www.nb.admin.ch — Swiss National Library
• Protocol: Model Context Protocol — Anthropic / Linux Foundation
• Related: eth-library-mcp — ETH Library: full Swiss library coverage (ETH = science, NB = humanities)
• Related: fedlex-mcp — Cultural heritage law + primary legislation
• Related: zurich-opendata-mcp — Spatial-historical: museum objects + Zurich geodata
• Portfolio: Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

Installation

Run via uv's uvx — no clone or manual install needed. Add to your MCP client config (mcpServers for Claude Desktop, Cursor and Windsurf; use a top-level servers key for VS Code in .vscode/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}