🇨🇭 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

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

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.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• uv (recommended) or pip

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

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 →

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.

Available Tools

SIK-ISEA (Swiss Art Research)

Nationalmuseum (SNM)

Nationalbibliothek (NB)

Cross-Source

Memory institutions (Memobase + Dodis) — federated facade

Example Use Cases

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