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  │◀────│  Helveticat: SRU, OAI-PMH│
                        │                              │     ├──────────────────────────┤
                        │  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: No throttling was observed in roughly 380 probe requests on 2026-09-20. That says nothing about the published terms: the National Library's SRU and OAI-PMH terms of use have not been checked by this project (see PROBE_REPORT_helveticat.md). 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. The opendata.swiss datasets carry open licences (CC0 / CC BY). For the National Library this project has not verified the terms of either endpoint. Where a record carries its own rights statement it is surfaced as rights (MARC 506/540) — many records carry none. The licence line in the attribution footer is the source's general statement, not a per-record one, and JSON responses carry no footer at all. Check with the source before redistributing.
• 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: maximumRecords is capped at 50 server-side, silently — a request for more returns 50 without a warning. SRU cannot filter by OAI set, so query and set_spec use different endpoints and cannot be combined into one server-side search. from_date/until_date are the catalogue record's modification dates, not publication years. Measured 2026-09-20; see PROBE_REPORT_helveticat.md.
• 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"

# Lint and format, as CI runs them
ruff check src/ tests/ scripts/
ruff format --check src/ tests/ scripts/

Ruff is pinned to an exact version in pyproject.toml ([project.optional-dependencies] dev), so pip install -e ".[dev]" gives you the version CI uses and the lint gates agree with it. Installing a newer ruff on top changes the rule set and the formatter, and reports differences on code nobody touched. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

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MCP Protocol Version

This server does not override the negotiation — the official mcp SDK decides, and both eras are reachable over either transport (stdio and HTTP alike). Pin the SDK, not a hand-rolled version string, to control which protocol versions are spoken. The numbers above are the pinned SDK's own registry (mcp_types.version: HANDSHAKE_PROTOCOL_VERSIONS, MODERN_PROTOCOL_VERSIONS) — read them there rather than from this table if the pin has moved.

Both revisions are pinned in tests/test_protocol_version.py and asserted against the installed SDK — including the handshake ceiling, measured against a live initialize through the assembled ASGI stack. A Dependabot bump of mcp can no longer move either number without this table going stale unnoticed.

Server identity

The identifier is hyphenated, like the repository, the PyPI package and the console script. The Python module keeps underscores — python -m swiss_cultural_heritage_mcp.server above is not an inconsistency, it is the only spelling Python allows for a package name.

The 2026-07-28 era has no handshake. Instead of sending serverInfo once per connection, the SDK stamps the identity into the _meta of every response, and server/discover carries exactly one field beyond the capabilities: instructions.

The SDK supplies none of these on its own — Server.server_info says so outright: "An unversioned server reports an empty version; the SDK never substitutes its own." Until 18 September 2026 this server passed none of them and reported "version": "" on every call. That is now measured in tests/test_server_identity.py, across both eras and through real HTTP requests: a constructor argument that is set is not yet a field on the wire.

Version, description and URL are derived, not written. A literal in the shipped path would be a second truth next to pyproject.toml — the very drift scripts/check_version_sync.py forbids for the version number.

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Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md

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Security

See SECURITY.md (Deutsch) for the security posture and how to report a vulnerability.

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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"
      ]
    }
  }
}