Cultural Heritage · Online · Since 1998
A global index of cultural heritage — rooted in Italy, open to the world
Cultural Heritage Online (CHO) is an editorial platform dedicated to the world’s cultural heritage. Born in Italy — and strongest there — it catalogues museums, archaeological sites, libraries, archives, theatres, historic gardens and significant collections across Italy, Europe, Asia and beyond, and publishes a magazine of original editorial coverage around them.
The project was founded in 1998 as beniculturalionline.it and has run continuously since. Across nearly three decades it has grown into one of the longest-standing online indexes of cultural heritage in English and Italian — deepest in Italy, and now reaching across Europe, Asia and the wider world — with an editorial archive of articles, institutional profiles and event coverage dating back to the late 1990s.
What we do
- Listings. We maintain structured records of cultural institutions and significant heritage sites — in Italy and, increasingly, across Europe, Asia and worldwide — with location, opening hours, contact details, fact-checked descriptions and editorial context.
- Magazine. We publish editorial coverage of exhibitions, restoration projects, openings, awards, and discoveries in cultural heritage. Articles are written or commissioned by our editorial team and verified against primary sources.
- Founding Partner programme. Institutions, foundations and cultural businesses — in Italy, across Europe, Asia and beyond — can join the directory as Founding Partners, with extended profile and editorial coverage. Details on the Founding Partner page.
- Guest contributions. Researchers, curators, museums and cultural professionals can pitch guest articles for the magazine. See the Guest Post page.
Community and reach
Over its history the CHO community has grown to more than 841,000 members and subscribers across our Facebook group dedicated to Art Nouveau, Italian Liberty, Belle Époque and related movements — generating over 3.7 million group views in the past 60 days alone. The archive attracts 1,500+ monthly organic visitors across 13,300 indexed keywords, with backlinks from 811 referring domains including The Guardian, National Geographic, The Conversation, and multiple Wikipedia editions in five languages — all organic citations, never paid. The platform has been cited as a reference source in the Italian Wikipedia articles on Patrimonio culturale and Beni culturali, and has been continuously published since 1998.
Join the communityEditorial standards
Every published item passes through a fact-check pass against primary sources. Preferred references are institutional (Treccani, ICCD, Beni Culturali, regional authorities, museum and foundation primary pages, peer-reviewed academic press). Wikipedia is consulted but not accepted as confirming evidence. Image rights are observed: photos are sourced from Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY / CC-BY-SA / Public Domain, from institutional press kits, or from the contributors themselves with clear attribution. Full editorial standards are published on the Editorial Guidelines page, and our image-contribution rules on the Image Rights page.
Entity and governance
Cultural Heritage Online is operated by OASIS Tech LLC, a Wyoming, USA limited-liability company. The same entity issues invoices for Founding Partner subscriptions, banner placements and editorial collaborations. The platform retains full editorial independence from its commercial partners: paid placements are clearly labelled as such and never affect editorial judgement on unrelated coverage.
Contact
Pitches, partnership enquiries, press and corrections: see the Contact page. For image-rights questions and photo contributions, see the Image Rights page.