travel.art MCP server

Model Context Protocol server for travel.art — art-tourism data (biennales, art fairs, museum visitor guides) exposed to AI agents.

Live at https://mcp.travel.art/. Public, unauthenticated, free.

What it does

Four tools, accessible via MCP Streamable HTTP (request/response mode, JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTP POST):

find_art_events

Search travel.art's catalogue of biennales, art fairs, and festivals.

{
  "name": "find_art_events",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "biennale",      // optional free-text
    "country": "IT",          // optional ISO 3166-1 alpha-2
    "type": "art-fair",       // optional: biennale | art-fair | festival
    "activeOn": "2026-06-20",  // optional ISO 8601 date
    "startsAfter": "2026-09-01",
    "endsBefore": "2026-12-31"
  }
}

Returns events with dates, venues, ticket info, summaries, and the canonical guideUrl linking to travel.art's full editorial visitor guide.

find_museum_guide

Search travel.art's catalogue of museum visitor guides.

{
  "name": "find_museum_guide",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "louvre",
    "city": "Paris",
    "country": "FR"
  }
}

Returns museums with current 2026 ticket info (including the Louvre's two-tier €22 EU / €32 non-EU pricing under Louvre Nouvelle Renaissance), opening hours, essential works in viewing order, route durations, and guideUrl to the full guide.

find_layover_itinerary

Search travel.art's catalogue of 3–6 hour art-focused layover plans from major European hub airports.

{
  "name": "find_layover_itinerary",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "caravaggio",        // optional free-text
    "city": "Rome",               // optional
    "country": "IT",              // optional
    "airport": "FCO",             // optional IATA code (e.g., MXP, CDG, AMS)
    "maxDurationHours": 4         // optional ceiling
  }
}

Returns itineraries with airports served, time-on-ground budget, art focus (artist / museum / theme), key venues, 2026-verified highlights (booking rules, Monday-closure traps, transit math), and guideUrl to the full hour-by-hour guide.

recommend_art_trip

Recommend an art-tourism itinerary for a city. Grounded only in travel.art's published content — no fabrication.

{
  "name": "recommend_art_trip",
  "arguments": {
    "city": "Florence",
    "startDate": "2026-06-15",
    "endDate": "2026-06-18"
  }
}

Returns events active during the trip dates plus museum guides for the city, with guideUrl for each.

Quick test

# Health check
curl https://mcp.travel.art/health

# List tools (MCP)
curl -X POST https://mcp.travel.art/ \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'

# Call a tool
curl -X POST https://mcp.travel.art/ \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"find_art_events","arguments":{"country":"IT"}}}'

Configure your MCP client

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or the Windows/Linux equivalent:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "travel-art": {
      "url": "https://mcp.travel.art/"
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The three tools should appear in the available tools list.

Cursor, Continue, mcp-inspector, your own agent

Any MCP-capable client that supports Streamable HTTP transport works the same way — point it at https://mcp.travel.art/.

Run locally over stdio

The same catalogue and the same three tools are also available as a local stdio MCP server, for clients that prefer a spawned process over a remote URL (and so directory evaluators can introspect the server without hitting the hosted endpoint):

git clone https://github.com/alexzavialov/travel-art-mcp.git
cd travel-art-mcp
npm install
npm start          # → npx tsx src/stdio.ts

To wire it into Claude Desktop as a local server instead of the remote URL:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "travel-art": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["tsx", "src/stdio.ts"]
    }
  }
}

The stdio server is functionally identical to the hosted endpoint — same tools.ts, same data.ts.

Catalogue

As of the latest publish:

• Art events (22): 6 cornerstone events (Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, Art Basel Switzerland/Paris/Miami, Frieze London) + 16 catalogue events spanning 4 continents — Sydney/Yokohama/Gwangju/Lyon/Manifesta-16 Ruhr biennales; Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze NY/Seoul, EXPO Chicago, TEFAF NY, The Armory Show, 1-54 London, Art SG art fairs; Rothko/Florence, Raphael/Met, Duchamp/MoMA museum exhibitions
• Museum essentials (12): The Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Vatican Museums + Sistine Chapel, Galleria degli Uffizi, Museo del Prado, British Museum, The Met, MoMA, Reina Sofía, Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, Tate Modern
• Layover itineraries (6): Milan (Leonardo, 5h MXP/LIN), Rome (Caravaggio, 4h FCO/CIA), Florence (Renaissance, 6h FLR/PSA), Amsterdam (Rijks + Van Gogh, 4h AMS), Paris (Louvre lightning, 3h CDG/ORY), London (BM + Tate, 5h LHR/LGW/STN/LTN/LCY)
• Growing weekly as new cornerstone articles publish on travel.art

Each record includes a lastVerified ISO date; AI agents that weight freshness can prefer recently-verified records.

Source

src/
  index.ts        # Worker entry — MCP HTTP protocol (JSON-RPC 2.0), GET info page, /health, /robots.txt
  stdio.ts        # Local stdio entry — same tools over MCP stdio transport (@modelcontextprotocol/sdk)
  tools.ts        # Tool definitions + handlers (shared by both entries)
  data.ts         # Static dataset (typed events + museums)
package.json
tsconfig.json
wrangler.toml     # Cloudflare Workers config

Stack: TypeScript. Two transports share one codebase: the hosted entry (index.ts) implements MCP HTTP (JSON-RPC 2.0) directly for Cloudflare Workers compatibility; the local entry (stdio.ts) uses @modelcontextprotocol/sdk over stdio. Both serve identical tools from tools.ts + data.ts.

Deploy your own copy

git clone https://github.com/alexzavialov/travel-art-mcp.git
cd travel-art-mcp
npm install
npx wrangler login                            # if not already
npx wrangler deploy

You'll need a Cloudflare account (free tier is sufficient — 100k requests/day).

To bind to a custom domain, update wrangler.toml with a routes entry, OR use the Cloudflare dashboard's Workers → your-worker → Settings → Triggers to add a Custom Domain.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests welcome.

The catalogue (src/data.ts) is hand-curated from published cornerstone articles on travel.art. Patches that add new events, museums, or destinations should ideally come with a corresponding visitor guide on travel.art so the guideUrl link resolves to substantive content — but exceptions for high-quality factual data (with primary sources cited) are considered.

License

MIT. Use it, fork it, deploy your own copy with your own catalogue.

Contact

• Server-side issues / data corrections: mcp@travel.art
• General travel.art editorial: editor@travel.art
• Project home: travel.art
• Privacy policy: travel.art/privacy/