Swiss Culture MCP Server

🇨🇭 Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

🏛️ swiss-culture-mcp

MCP server for Swiss cultural heritage data from the Federal Office of Culture (BAK) — ISOS townscapes, Living Traditions, cultural prizes, press releases. No API key required.

🌐 English | Deutsch

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Overview

swiss-culture-mcp makes Swiss cultural data accessible to AI assistants. The server connects LLMs like Claude with Switzerland's national cultural heritage: from protected townscapes (ISOS) to living traditions of intangible cultural heritage and current cultural awards.

Sources: geo.admin.ch REST API · news.admin.ch RSS · opendata.swiss CKAN · lebendige-traditionen.ch

No API key required. All data sources are publicly available (Open Government Data).

Anchor demo query: "Which protected townscapes are there in the school districts of the city of Zurich, and what living traditions are practised there?"

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Features

• 🏘️ ISOS search – Federal Inventory of Swiss Townscapes Worth Protecting by name, canton or settlement type
• 📜 Living Traditions – 228 entries of Swiss intangible cultural heritage
• 🏆 Cultural prizes – Swiss Film Prize, Grand Prix Literature, Music Prize and more
• 📰 BAK press releases – current news from the Federal Office of Culture
• 📦 Open data catalogue – BAK datasets on opendata.swiss
• ☁️ Dual transport – stdio for Claude Desktop, Streamable HTTP for cloud deployment

3 Resources: bak://isos/kantone · bak://isos/kategorien · bak://kulturpreise/uebersicht

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Data Sources

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Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• uv or pip
• No API keys required

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Installation

# Recommended: uvx (no install step needed)
uvx swiss-culture-mcp

# Alternative: pip
pip install swiss-culture-mcp

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Quickstart

# Start the server (stdio mode for Claude Desktop)
uvx swiss-culture-mcp

Try it immediately in Claude Desktop:

"Show me all protected townscapes in the canton of Graubünden" "Which living traditions are practised in canton Appenzell?" "Which Swiss cultural prizes were awarded in 2026?"

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Configuration

Environment Variables

Claude Desktop Configuration

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

Config file locations:

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

After restarting Claude Desktop, all tools are available. Example queries:

• "Show me all protected townscapes in the canton of Graubünden"
• "What is the Alphorn and Büchelspiel tradition?"
• "Which Swiss cultural prizes were awarded in 2026?"
• "Is the old town of Stein am Rhein in the ISOS inventory?"
• "Which living traditions are practised in canton Appenzell?"

Cloud Deployment (Streamable HTTP)

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. Set environment variables in the Render dashboard
4. In claude.ai under Settings → MCP Servers, add: https://your-app.onrender.com/mcp

# Docker / local HTTP mode (loopback only — safe default)
MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable_http MCP_PORT=8000 python -m swiss_culture_mcp.server

# Public bind (DANGEROUS — only behind an authenticating reverse proxy)
MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable_http MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 MCP_ALLOW_PUBLIC_BIND=true \
    python -m swiss_culture_mcp.server

⚠️ Security: The server itself has no authentication. Binding to a public interface without an upstream auth layer turns it into an open proxy for the federal data sources. Always run an authenticating reverse proxy (Cloudflare Access, oauth2-proxy, nginx + auth_request) in front of 0.0.0.0 deployments.

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Architecture

┌─────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────────┐
│   Claude / AI   │────▶│   Swiss Culture MCP      │────▶│  geo.admin.ch REST       │
│   (MCP Host)    │◀────│   (MCP Server)           │◀────│  news.admin.ch RSS       │
└─────────────────┘     │                          │     │  opendata.swiss CKAN     │
                        │  10 Tools · 3 Resources  │     │  lebendige-traditionen   │
                        │  Stdio | Streamable HTTP  │     └──────────────────────────┘
                        └──────────────────────────┘

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Project Structure

swiss-culture-mcp/
├── src/
│   └── swiss_culture_mcp/
│       ├── __init__.py
│       └── server.py          # All 10 tools, 3 resources
├── tests/
│   ├── conftest.py            # pytest configuration
│   └── test_server.py         # 36 tests (unit + live)
├── pyproject.toml
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md            # Contribution guide (English)
├── CONTRIBUTING.de.md         # Contribution guide (German)
├── SECURITY.md               # Security policy & posture (English)
├── SECURITY.de.md            # Security policy & posture (German)
├── LICENSE
├── README.md                  # This file (English)
└── README.de.md               # German version

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MCP Protocol Version

This server speaks two protocol eras over the same endpoint. The client's first request on a connection decides which one applies; a later claim from the other era is refused.

Both revisions are pinned in tests/test_protocol_version.py and asserted against the installed SDK, so a Dependabot bump of mcp cannot move either one silently. This server builds no ASGI app to send an initialize through, so the gate asserts the SDK constants rather than a measured response — the weaker form, named rather than left unsaid.

Note that the SDK's LATEST_PROTOCOL_VERSION is an alias for the modern era, not for the handshake era — pinning against it alone would leave the era that current clients actually negotiate free to drift.

Update policy. When the gate fails, do not edit the constant blindly: read the spec changelog between the two revisions, verify the server still behaves, then move the constant, this section, README.de.md and CHANGELOG.md together.

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Testing

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

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

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Example Use Cases

Schools / Education

"Which protected townscapes are there in the school districts of the city of Zurich?"
→ bak_isos_by_kanton(kanton="ZH") + bak_get_isos_detail(...)

"Find living traditions for a project week on the theme of cultural heritage"
→ bak_list_traditions() + bak_get_tradition_detail(slug="...")

"Which UNESCO World Heritage Sites are also in ISOS?"
→ bak_search_isos(query="...") + bak_get_opendata(query="UNESCO")

City Administration / Spatial Planning

"Is the building at address X within an ISOS perimeter?"
→ bak_search_isos(query="community/place name")

"Which BAK datasets are available for GIS integration?"
→ bak_get_opendata() → WMS/WFS URLs for GIS software

AI Working Group / Demos

"Show current cultural policy of the federal government"
→ bak_get_news() + bak_get_kulturpreise()
→ More use cases by audience →

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Safety & Limits

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Known Limitations

• ISOS statistics: Sample-based per canton (not exhaustive for all cantons)
• Living Traditions: HTML scraping – may break if lebendige-traditionen.ch changes its structure
• BAK news/prizes: RSS feed limited to the most recent entries
• opendata.swiss CKAN: Full-text search may return results from other publishers
• The addresses this server hands out are measured, not assumed. scripts/record_fixtures.py re-checks every one on each run, together with four controls (an invented geo.admin.ch service, an invented BAK path, an invented news organisation number, an invented tradition slug). On 2026-08-08 one was dead: bak_isos_overview published .../home/kulturerbe/baukultur.html as its BAK source — HTTP 404, as is the whole kulturerbe branch. It was replaced by the BAK root, which verifiably answers 200, not by a guessed replacement URL.
• Everything else held. geo.admin.ch, opendata.swiss, gisos, isos, the news feed with org-nr=314 and the tradition pages all return real content. That null result is recorded too: without it the next pass starts from nothing.

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Synergies with Other MCP Servers

swiss-culture-mcp can be combined with other servers in the portfolio:

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Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

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Security

Security posture, hardening details and the responsible-disclosure process are documented in SECURITY.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

• Data: Bundesamt für Kultur (BAK) – Federal Office of Culture
• ISOS: geo.admin.ch – Federal Office of Topography swisstopo
• Traditions: lebendige-traditionen.ch – BAK living traditions registry
• Protocol: Model Context Protocol – Anthropic / Linux Foundation
• Related: zurich-opendata-mcp – MCP server for Zurich city open data
• 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-culture-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "swiss-culture-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}