Europeana APIs, made easy.

Europeana APIs give access to rich cultural heritage data from thousands of institutions across Europe—ready to power your workflows.

Request an API key

To request an API key, you’ll need a free Europeana account. This gives you a central place to view/manage your API keys, and gives Europeana a stable contact for support and sharing important updates.

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Europeana APIs and how they work together

Europeana’s APIs allow you to search for cultural heritage items and their metadata in the Europeana collections, directly access this data, display them in IIIF viewers, and more. To use one of the APIs, request a free API key, and then read the documentation on how you can use it. See the full list of all of Europeana’s API’s here.

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Search API

The Search API provides a way to search for metadata records and media in the Europeana collections.

Record API

The Record API lets you retrieve detailed information about individual items available in Europeana.

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IIIF APIs

The IIIF APIs provide access to structured metadata about objects, and offer ways to visualise 2D objects in an interoperable viewer.

Get started

If you want to learn how to use APIs for your own project, join our instructor-led training courses on getting started with Europeana APIs. These courses have been running since March 2024 and you can sign up using the link below. Ready to use one of our APIs for your own project? Request an API key at the top of this page.

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APIs on Europeana.eu

Europeana.eu also uses Europeana’s APIs! To see which requests the portal sends to the APIs go to europeana.eu, and click the API requests button in the footer of any Item, Search and Collection page on the Europeana website.

Go to Europeana.eu

Colour Explorer

Explore images on Europeana by colour! The colour explorer chooses a random colour and automatically creates a gallery for you. Find your favourite colour, mix & match, share what you discover. This project uses the Europeana Search API.

Go to the colour explorer

On This Day

Explore images taken on this day in history - or choose any day of the year to find historical images related to that day. This project used the Search and Record APIs to download a custom dataset.

Go to On This Day

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Read in more detail about how you can get access to Europeana’s APIs, what APIs Europeana has, and how to properly use the data you get from Europeana’s APIs for your own project.

Go to the Europeana API FAQ