Europeana Cultural Heritage Scraper

Europeana Cultural Heritage Scraper

Scrape cultural heritage records from Europeana by search term, media type, country, or provider, up to a million per run. Every item comes with its title, creator, institution, license, and direct media links. No API key required. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Europeana's own API needs a key and rate-limits you. This reads the public search feeds directly, filtered by media type, country, data provider, or reuse rights, and returns each match in one fixed schema. Collect paintings, manuscripts, videos, sound recordings, and 3D models from thousands of European archives, libraries, and museums.

Who uses it	What they scrape Europeana for
Digital humanities researchers	Build a corpus of primary sources for a specific historical period or theme.
Cultural heritage developers	Populate an app or website with openly licensed images and metadata.
Museum curators	Discover how other institutions have catalogued similar objects.
Data journalists	Analyze the geographic spread of a particular artifact type across Europe.

What it does

This Actor collects Europeana cultural heritage items by search query and optional filters, and returns each one as a flat row.

• 🔍 Free-text search: query across titles, descriptions, and subjects with a single term.
• 🖼️ Media type filter: restrict results to IMAGE, TEXT, VIDEO, SOUND, or 3D.
• 🌍 Country filter: narrow by country of provenance, such as 'France' or 'Germany'.
• 🏛️ Data provider filter: target a specific institution like 'Rijksmuseum' or 'Europeana'.
• 📜 License filter: collect only open, restricted, or permission-required items.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Europeana data

📚 Build a research dataset.

A digital humanities scholar enters a search term like 'illuminated manuscript' and filters by country to collect metadata for a corpus study.

🖥️ Power a cultural heritage app.

A developer scrapes openly licensed images and their metadata to seed a virtual gallery or educational tool.

📊 Compare institutional collections.

A curator runs the same query against different data providers to see how similar objects are described across Europe.

🗺️ Map artifact provenance.

A journalist collects all items tagged with a specific location and plots their originating institutions on a map.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key needed	Runs on the public demo key by default; bring your own for higher throughput.
Flat, predictable schema	Every record has the same fields, ready for analysis or a database.
Direct media links	Get the thumbnail and full-resolution URL for every image, video, or sound file.
Open license awareness	Filter by reuse rights so you only collect items you can legally use.

How it compares

This actor and the Europeana Art & Cultural Heritage Scraper both pull data from Europeana, but they differ in filtering and output focus.

Feature	ParseForge	Europeana Art & Cultural Heritage Scraper
Free-text search query	Yes	Yes
Filter by media type (IMAGE, TEXT, VIDEO, SOUND, 3D)	Yes	Not listed
Filter by country of provenance	Yes	Not listed
Filter by data provider institution	Yes	Not listed
Filter by license reusability	Yes	Not listed
Optional personal API key for higher limits	Yes	Not listed

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from a search term and optional media type, country, data provider, or license filters, and filters run as each item is read so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "query": "mona lisa"
}

A larger pull:

{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "query": "mona lisa"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.00999 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$1.00
1,000 results	$9.99
10,000 results	$99.90

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Europeana Cultural Heritage Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Europeana through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/europeana-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check your search term and filters. A very specific query combined with a restrictive license or country filter can return zero items. Try broadening your search term first.

The run stops before reaching my maxItems.

This means Europeana has no more matching items for your query. Try removing some filters or using a more general search term.

I get an error about the API key.

The built-in demo key has rate limits. If you hit them, get a free personal key from https://api.europeana.eu and enter it in the optional API Key field.

Some fields are empty in my results.

Not every Europeana record has every field populated. Missing data is normal for fields like 'creator' or 'date' on some items.

The media link does not work.

Europeana occasionally changes its media URLs. If a link is broken, the item may have been moved or restricted. Try the item's landing page URL instead.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need a Europeana API key?	No. The actor uses a built-in public demo key. You can optionally provide your own free key for higher rate limits.
What media types can I filter by?	You can restrict results to IMAGE, TEXT, VIDEO, SOUND, or 3D. Leave the filter empty to get all types.
How many items can I scrape in one run?	You set the maximum, from 1 up to 1,000,000. The actor stops when it reaches that count or runs out of matching results.
Does it return the actual image or video file?	No, it returns the direct URL to the media file on Europeana's servers. You can download files separately using those URLs.
Can I filter by license or reuse rights?	Yes. Choose 'Open' for public domain and Creative Commons items, 'Restricted', or 'Permission Required'.
What is a data provider?	It is the institution that contributed the item, such as the Rijksmuseum or the British Library. You can filter by provider name.
How do I search for a specific artist or author?	Enter their name in the search term field. The query matches against titles, descriptions, and subject fields.
What output formats are supported?	You can export your dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform.
Can I filter by country?	Yes. Enter a country name like 'Italy' or 'Polska' to restrict results to items from that country.
Is this actor affiliated with Europeana?	No, it is an independent tool that uses Europeana's public search API. It is not endorsed by the Europeana Foundation.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Europeana Foundation. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.