Vatican City, Jan 11, 2012 / 13:48 pm
The Vatican Museums broke attendance records in 2011 with just over 5 million people entering its doors.
“It is, in a particular way, objectively amazing,” wrote Antonio Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums, in L’Osservatore Romano newspaper on Jan. 10.
By way of comparison, Paolucci said that Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is Italy’s “most famous and most popular” museum but it is only able to accommodate 1.5 million people in a year.
The visitor numbers for the Vatican Museums put it in the same bracket with British Museum in London, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Prado in Madrid. Meanwhile, the Louvre in Paris remains the continent’s most visited museum with 8.5 million guests every year.