io.github.malkreide/swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp

🇨🇭 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:

Source	Data	API
SIK-ISEA (SIKART)	~17,000 Swiss artists — SIKART biographical data	opendata.swiss CKAN
Nationalmuseum (SNM)	Museum collections (numismatics, seals, special collections)	opendata.swiss CKAN
Nationalbibliothek (NB)	Swiss national bibliography (Helveticat)	SRU (search) + OAI-PMH (collections)
Memoriav / Memobase	Audiovisual heritage (photo, audio, video)	Linked Open Data (JSON-LD / Hydra)
Dodis	Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland (documents, persons, organisations)	JSON-REST (Solr) + permalinks

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)

Tool	Description
heritage_search_artists	Search ~17,000 Swiss artists (SIKART) by name or place
heritage_get_artist	Full artist profile by SIKART ID (HAUPTNR)

Nationalmuseum (SNM)

Tool	Description
heritage_search_museum_datasets	Search SNM datasets on opendata.swiss
heritage_browse_collection	Browse objects within a collection via CKAN DataStore

Nationalbibliothek (NB)

Tool	Description
heritage_search_helveticat	Full-text search over the whole holdings (SRU), or browse one collection (OAI-PMH)
heritage_list_nb_collections	List the 68 available OAI-PMH sets
heritage_get_publication	Selected MARC21 fields for one publication, normalised to Dublin-Core-style keys (OAI-PMH GetRecord) — not the complete catalogue record

Cross-Source

Tool	Description
heritage_cross_search	Parallel search across SIK-ISEA + SNM + NB

Memory institutions (Memobase + Dodis) — federated facade

Tool	Description
search_heritage	Federated search over Memobase + Dodis (collection = memobase | dodis | all), with date_from / date_to / media_type filters. Every result carries source, permalink and a split metadata/digitised-object licence
get_heritage_item	Full metadata for one object (collection, item_id). Metadata + links only — protected full texts are never reproduced
list_heritage_collections	Discovery: which collections exist, their protocol, auth and licences — including the probed-but-not-connected sources (Bundesarchiv, Landesmuseum) and why

Example Use Cases

Query	Tool
"Who is Ferdinand Hodler?"	heritage_get_artist
"Find Swiss artists born in Basel"	heritage_search_artists
"What coins from Zurich does the Nationalmuseum have?"	heritage_browse_collection
"Find publications about Volksschule"	heritage_search_helveticat
"Search for everything about Sophie Taeuber-Arp"	heritage_cross_search
"Sources on the 19th-c. Zurich Volksschule in Swiss memory institutions"	search_heritage

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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

Source	Protocol	Coverage	Auth
SIK-ISEA (SIKART)	CKAN DataStore	~17,000 Swiss artists	None
Nationalmuseum	CKAN DataStore	Museum collections	None
Nationalbibliothek	SRU 1.2 (CQL) + OAI-PMH 2.0	Swiss national bibliography	None
Memoriav / Memobase	Linked Open Data (JSON-LD / Hydra, RiC-O)	Audiovisual heritage (~460k records)	None
Dodis	JSON-REST (Solr) + stable permalinks	Diplomatic documents, persons, organisations	None

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:

Source	Result	Why
Memobase	✅ connected	Linked-Open-Data API (api.memobase.ch, JSON-LD/Hydra); full-text search via ?q=, single record via /record/<id>; pagination via offset/size. Metadata open; digitised objects carry per-object rightsstatements.org rights ("In Copyright", access "onsite").
Dodis	✅ connected	JSON-REST/Solr (beta.dodis.ch/api): search via POST /api/solr/query, item via GET /api/solr/full/<id>; stable permalinks dodis.ch/<id>. Metadata open (citation required); documents carry per-document rights (TEI/PDF behind the permalink).
Bundesarchiv	⛔ not connected	The recherche.bar.admin.ch backend (CMI AIS) sits behind eIAM login and Google reCAPTCHA — not machine-accessible without emulating a session, which is fragile and against the operator's intent.
Landesmuseum	⛔ not connected	sammlung.nationalmuseum.ch has no public API (only an internal, undocumented Ajax/HTML surface) — connecting it would require scraping, which violates the resilience guardrails.

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

Item	Value
SDK	mcp[cli]>=2.0.0,<3 (pinned in pyproject.toml)
Served via the initialize handshake	2024-11-05 … 2025-11-25 — the handshake ceiling
Served via the per-request envelope	2026-07-28
Who picks	The client's first request, once per connection: a request carrying the 2026-07-28 _meta envelope opens a modern connection, anything else opens a handshake connection. A later claim from the other era is refused.
Update policy	The SDK pin is the source of truth for the protocol version. Dependabot opens monthly mcp update PRs; protocol-version bumps are reviewed there and recorded in CHANGELOG.md.

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

Field	Value	Source
name	swiss-cultural-heritage-mcp	__dist__ — the PyPI name, also in server.json
title	Schweizer Kulturerbe	server.SERVER_TITLE
version	the shipped package version	pyproject.toml via importlib.metadata
description	the PyPI one-liner	pyproject.toml → [project].description
websiteUrl	the project homepage	pyproject.toml → [project.urls].Homepage
instructions	what this server is for	server.INSTRUCTIONS

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"
      ]
    }
  }
}