diff --git a/Doc/Makefile b/Doc/Makefile
index cc47e40698f..31670ad296e 100644
--- a/Doc/Makefile
+++ b/Doc/Makefile
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@ help:
 	@echo "  suspicious to check for suspicious markup in output text"
 	@echo "  coverage  to check documentation coverage for library and C API"
 	@echo "  dist      to create a \"dist\" directory with archived docs for download"
+	@echo "  serve     to serve the documentation on the localhost (8000)"
 
 # Note: if you update versions here, do the same in make.bat and README.txt
 checkout:
@@ -149,3 +150,6 @@ dist:
 
 check:
 	$(PYTHON) tools/rstlint.py -i tools
+
+serve:
+	../Tools/scripts/serve.py build/html
diff --git a/Tools/scripts/serve.py b/Tools/scripts/serve.py
new file mode 100755
index 00000000000..09d850abced
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Tools/scripts/serve.py
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+import sys
+import os
+import mimetypes
+from wsgiref import simple_server, util
+
+def app(environ, respond):
+
+    fn = os.path.join(path, environ['PATH_INFO'][1:])
+    if '.' not in fn.split(os.path.sep)[-1]:
+        fn = os.path.join(fn, 'index.html')
+    type = mimetypes.guess_type(fn)[0]
+
+    if os.path.exists(fn):
+        respond('200 OK', [('Content-Type', type)])
+        return util.FileWrapper(open(fn))
+    else:
+        respond('404 Not Found', [('Content-Type', 'text/plain')])
+        return ['not found']
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+    path = sys.argv[1]
+    port = int(sys.argv[2]) if len(sys.argv) > 2 else 8000
+    httpd = simple_server.make_server('', port, app)
+    httpd.serve_forever()