art.travel/mcp

Official4 tools

by alexzavialov · TypeScript

travel.art

Art-tourism data for AI agents: biennales, art fairs, museums, layover itineraries with 2026 facts.

Art tourism data including biennales, fairs, museums, and layover itineraries.

Topics

artbiennalecloudflare-workersmcpmcp-servermodel-context-protocolmuseumstourismtravelart-tourism

Captured live from the server via tools/list.

find_art_events

Search travel.art's catalogue of upcoming and current art events (biennales, art fairs, festivals). Returns events with dates, venues, ticket info, summary, and a link to travel.art's full visitor guide. Use for queries like 'when is Venice Biennale 2026', 'art fairs in October 2026', 'what's on in Miami in December'.

Parameters (6)

querystring
Free-text query (event name, theme, keyword). Optional.
countrystring
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g., 'IT', 'CH', 'GB', 'US'). Optional filter.
typestring
Filter by event type. Optional.
activeOnstring
ISO 8601 date (YYYY-MM-DD). Returns only events whose date range covers this date. Optional.
startsAfterstring
ISO 8601 date. Returns only events starting on or after this date. Optional.
endsBeforestring
ISO 8601 date. Returns only events ending on or before this date. Optional.

find_museum_guide

Search travel.art's catalogue of museum visitor guides. Returns museums with current 2026 ticket info, opening hours, address, essential works in viewing order, route duration, and a link to travel.art's full guide. Use for queries like 'how to visit the Louvre', 'Vatican Museums skip the line', 'Uffizi best route'.

Parameters (3)

querystring
Free-text query (museum name, work, artist, city). Optional.
citystring
City filter (e.g., 'Paris', 'Rome', 'Florence'). Optional.
countrystring
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code. Optional.

find_layover_itinerary

Search travel.art's layover-itinerary catalogue — short-window (3–6h) art-focused trips between flight connections from major European hub airports. Returns itineraries by city, airport, art focus, or duration, with venues, transit notes, and a link to travel.art's full hour-by-hour guide. Use for queries like 'art layover in Rome from Fiumicino', '4-hour Caravaggio plan', 'short Louvre window from CDG', 'Amsterdam 4 hours Schiphol'.

Parameters (5)

querystring
Free-text query (city, artist, museum, airport, theme). Optional.
citystring
City filter (e.g., 'Milan', 'Rome', 'Florence', 'Amsterdam', 'Paris', 'London'). Optional.
countrystring
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g., 'IT', 'NL', 'FR', 'GB'). Optional.
airportstring
IATA airport code the layover serves (e.g., 'MXP', 'FCO', 'AMS', 'CDG', 'LHR'). Optional filter.
maxDurationHoursnumber
Maximum time-on-ground budget in hours. Returns only itineraries that fit ≤ this duration. Optional.

recommend_art_trip

Recommend an art-tourism trip itinerary for a specific city using only travel.art's published content. Returns events active during the trip dates, museum guides for the city, and links to all relevant travel.art guides. The recommendation is grounded in published data only — no fabrication.

Parameters (3)

citystringrequired
Destination city (e.g., 'Paris', 'Venice', 'Florence', 'London', 'Basel', 'Miami Beach').
startDatestring
ISO 8601 trip start date. Optional — if provided, filters events to those active on or near these dates.
endDatestring
ISO 8601 trip end date. Optional.

README.md7 KBView on GitHub

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.

json

{
  "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.

json

{
  "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.

json

{
  "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.

json

{
  "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

bash

# 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:

json

{
  "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):

bash

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:

json

{
  "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

code

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

bash

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: <a href="mailto:mcp@travel.art">mcp@travel.art</a>
General travel.art editorial: <a href="mailto:editor@travel.art">editor@travel.art</a>
Project home: travel.art
Privacy policy: travel.art/privacy/

Install

claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcp.travel.art/"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Desktop config is stdio-only; this bridges via mcp-remote. Native remote: Settings > Connectors.