The British Museum Is World’s Second Most Popular Cultural Institution

The British Museum has leapfrogged over the Big Apple’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to be crowned the second most popular cultural institution on the planet after the Louvre in Paris.

The annual list, compiled by The Art Newspaper, saw The British Museum – whose early medieval gallery reopened last week after a major refurbishment – reclaim the second spot after a two year absence.

The British Museum – currently hosting a Viking exhibition complete with a 37 metre longship – isn’t the only London venue to have scored a coveted top 10 ‘most visited museums and galleries’ spot. The National Gallery came in at number four, while the Tate Modern was sixth.

Some 6.7 million people visited the British Museum in 2013, with six million visiting the National Gallery and 4.9 million flocking to the Tate Modern.

London joins Paris in having three entries in the the top 10. The French capital’s Centre Pompidou is ninth and its Museum d’Orsay is 10th.

The Vatican Museums (fifth), National Palace Museum in Taipei (seventh) and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC (eighth) round up the list.