Heritage and culture
Monuments, museum collections, archives and historical sources. 8 sources, 2 international.
National monuments: highest in Noord-Holland (14,052 national monuments), lowest in Flevoland (110 national monuments)
Museums in the Netherlands by theme (CBS count): history is the largest part, 65% in 2024
Objects in the Rijksmuseum collection by type: most prints (425,961 objects), then photographs and drawings
Printed titles from the Low Countries per year (STCN, KB): 1,364 titles in 1800, 49 times as much as in 1540
Heritage datasets in the NDE Dataset Register by licence: most CC BY 4.0 (1,833 datasets), then CC0 1.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0
National Archives finding aids by year of last change: 2024 is the largest part, 58% in October 2026
More from the data
All 9 examplesRijksmuseum objects with and without a digital image (figures from the Rijksmuseum API): with an image is the largest part, 87% in October 2026
National monuments per municipality: most Amsterdam (7,679 national monuments), then Maastricht and Utrecht
Records in Open Archives by Dutch archive: most Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum (25,449,700 records), then Stadsarchief Amsterdam and Stadsarchief Rotterdam
Sources
Europeana
Europeana combines the collections of thousands of heritage institutions in Europe, including Dutch ones: artworks, photographs, newspapers, books, natural history items. According to its API page there are more than 3 million artworks, 6 million photographs, 2 million newspapers and 12 million natural history items. All metadata are CC0; images carry their own rights statement per object. The APIs (Search, Record, IIIF, SPARQL, OAI-PMH) require a free key.
KB, National Library of the Netherlands (linked data)
On data.bibliotheken.nl the KB publishes its catalogues as linked data under CC0: the Dutch national bibliography NBT (4,911,178 books), the Short Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN, 225,218 titles printed before 1801, with 651,395 copies), the Dutch author name thesaurus (2,816,677 persons), the Brinkman subject headings and DBNL titles and authors. Together 258,524,625 statements, queryable with SPARQL (as of 16 October 2026).
National Archives of the Netherlands, finding aids and scans
The National Archives publish their finding aids as open data (CC0) via OAI-PMH, in EAD XML. On 16 October 2026 there were 7,411 finding aids (7,442 sets), each with the description of the archive and its inventory numbers. Where scans exist, each inventory number has a METS file linking to the images (public domain or CC0). Finding aids made by third parties (2.8 percent) are not open data.
NDE Dataset Register
The Dataset Register of the Dutch Digital Heritage Network is the catalogue of Dutch heritage data: archives, museums, libraries and municipalities register their dataset descriptions, the register harvests and validates them and loads them into a SPARQL endpoint. On 16 October 2026 it held 3,401 datasets with a valid registration from 159 publishers. The register contains descriptions, not the data itself: each description points to downloads or APIs (OAI-PMH, SPARQL, IIIF) at the institution. It is maintained by the National Archives.
Open Archives (Open Archieven)
Open Archives by Coret Genealogie combines the genealogical data of 200 archives and societies, mostly Dutch, also Belgian and French. On 16 October 2026 the statistics API counted 368,475,032 records across 199 source types: civil registration of deaths, births and marriages, population registers, church baptism, marriage and burial registers, notarial records and more. A keyless REST API, SPARQL, OAI-PMH and file exports under CC BY 4.0.
Register of national monuments
The register of the Cultural Heritage Agency: 63,098 national monuments on 15 October 2026, of which 61,637 built and 1,461 archaeological. With number, category, registration date, BAG address and map point or outline. Also the protected townscapes and world heritage. As a map service (WFS), download and linked data with SPARQL.
Rijksmuseum collection
The Rijksmuseum shares its collection data through six services without a key (plus the deprecated SRU): a search API, a resolver for its persistent identifiers (Linked Art), OAI-PMH, a change stream (LDES), IIIF for images and data dumps. On 16 October 2026 the search API counted 841,378 objects, 735,784 of them with a digital image, 425,961 under prints and 5,337 paintings.
Wikidata
Wikidata is the free knowledge base behind Wikipedia: millions of items (people, places, buildings, organisations, artworks) with properties and sources, and above all with the IDs other registers use. For the Netherlands these include national monument numbers (P359), CBS municipality codes (P382) and KvK company IDs (P3220). This lets you join datasets that have no common key of their own. Everything is CC0. Note: robots.txt disallows bots on the SPARQL service and the APIs, so the Open Data Index does not query Wikidata itself.
In the harvested indexes
1,124 datasets in data.overheid.nl, the National Georegister and city portals with a subject belonging to this topic: Cultuur en recreatie, Cultuur.
Who publishes most
Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek191- ZZeeland (provincie)177
- ZHZuid-Holland90
- GGroningen (provincie)56
Fryslan55- Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed53
- DDrenthe43
- OOverijssel43
Breda (gemeente)27
Rotterdam26
Amsterdam25- HHilversum (gemeente)24
Recently changed
- Stadsarchief Breda Genealogie A2A VestbrievenBreda (gemeente)
- Stadsarchief Breda Genealogie A2A DTB TrouwenBreda (gemeente)
- Stadsarchief Breda Genealogie A2A PatentvermeldingenBreda (gemeente)
- Stadsarchief Breda Genealogie A2A Burgerlijke stand geboortenBreda (gemeente)
- Sportaccomodaties BredaBreda (gemeente)
- Stadsarchief Breda Genealogie A2A BorgbrievenBreda (gemeente)
- Cultuurhistoriedataportaal Eindhoven
- Cultuurhistorische waarden BredaBreda (gemeente)
- Stadsarchief Breda Genealogie A2A Burgerlijke stand echtscheidingenBreda (gemeente)
- Stadsarchief Breda Genealogie A2A Burgerlijke stand overlijdenBreda (gemeente)