Top 10 Museums in the World

Short answer

• There is no single official ranking of the world's best museums. This list combines two attributed measures: 2024 attendance from the TEA/AECOM Museum Index 2024, and the museums that appear again and again across the major published top 10 lists. The order below follows attendance within that set, and it is a guide to popularity, not a verdict on quality.
• The Louvre in Paris leads the list on attendance, with about 8.7 million visits in 2024. The Vatican Museums and the British Museum follow, each with more than 6 million visits in 2024.
• The ten are the Louvre, the Vatican Museums, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the State Hermitage Museum, the Museo del Prado, the National Gallery in London, the Uffizi Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Rijksmuseum.
• If the list were ordered by attendance alone, the Palace Museum in Beijing, with 17 million visits in 2024, would lead it. It is left out here because it is a palace complex rather than a general art and history museum, and the same reasoning excludes other palace and shrine sites from the TEA/AECOM top 20.
• Each museum below gives what it holds, why it matters, and its 2024 visitor figure where a published figure exists. Figures come from the museums themselves, from the TEA/AECOM index, or from The Art Newspaper's annual survey, and every figure is dated so you can tell how fresh it is.

How This List Was Chosen

A list of the “best” museums in the world sounds simple, and it is not. No international body ranks museums by quality, and the lists you find online disagree with each other. One list puts the Smithsonian first, another leaves it out entirely, and a third ranks museums by reputation scores from a business survey. A reader who wants a useful answer needs to know what a list is actually measuring, so this article states its method plainly.

Two measures were used. The first is attendance. The Themed Entertainment Association and AECOM publish an annual Museum Index that counts visits at the world’s major museums, and the 2024 edition, published in August 2025, is the edition this article uses. Figures in this article are for 2024; a newer TEA index covering 2025 was published in October 2026. Attendance is not a measure of quality, but it is a hard number, and it shows which museums the world actually visits. The second measure is consensus: the museums that recur across the major published top 10 lists, including the lists from WatchMojo, National Geographic’s roundup, and travel publishers. A museum that appears on all of them has earned its place in the conversation, whatever its attendance figure.

The list below is the overlap of those two measures: broad art and history museums that are both heavily visited and consistently listed. That choice has consequences, and they should be named. The Palace Museum in Beijing drew 17 million visits in 2024, more than any museum on earth, and the National Museum of China drew about 7 million, yet neither appears below. Both are excluded because they are a palace complex and a national history museum built around a single country’s story, not the general art and history museums this list covers. London’s Natural History Museum drew 6.3 million visits in 2024, more than the Met, yet it is a natural history museum, and natural history and science museums are a separate subject for a separate list. Within the ten that remain, the order follows 2024 attendance, so the ranking is attributed to a named source rather than invented by this article.

A second caution applies to the figures themselves. Museums count visits in different ways. Some count every entry, including repeat visits by the same person, and some report fiscal years that run from April to March rather than calendar years. British figures in this article are calendar year 2024 unless stated otherwise, and each figure names its source so the reader can check it.

1. The Louvre, Paris, France

The Louvre is the most visited museum in Europe, and the most visited general art museum in the world. It welcomed about 8.7 million visitors in 2024, according to the museum’s own press release, and the TEA/AECOM Museum Index 2024 puts the figure at 8,737,000. That is nearly 2 million visits ahead of the next museum on this list. The Louvre’s own release adds detail: 77 percent of its 2024 visitors came from outside France, 41 percent were under 26, and 66 percent were visiting for the first time.

The museum opened as a public museum in 1793, in the former royal palace on the banks of the Seine. Today it holds more than 380,000 objects, from Egyptian antiquities to nineteenth century French painting, spread across wings that take a full day to walk properly. The collection is so large that most visitors see only a small part of it, which is why planning matters more here than at any other museum on this list.

Three works draw the largest crowds. The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500s, sits behind glass in its own room, and the crowd around it is the densest in the museum. The Venus de Milo, a marble statue of Aphrodite from the second century BC, stands in the Greek sculpture galleries. The Winged Victory of Samothrace, a Hellenistic marble from around 190 BC, commands the top of the Daru staircase and is the first great work many visitors meet. Beyond those three, the Egyptian antiquities department and the Italian Renaissance galleries reward the visitors who arrive early and move past the Mona Lisa queue first.

The Louvre caps daily admissions at 30,000 visitors, a limit announced in 2023 to protect the building and the experience, so timed tickets booked in advance are close to essential. The glass Pyramid in the courtyard, designed by I. M. Pei and completed in 1989, is the museum’s modern landmark and the main entrance. If you want the wider context on scale, our guide to the biggest museum in the world compares the largest museums by floor area and collection size.

2. The Vatican Museums, Vatican City

The Vatican Museums hold the art collected by the popes over five centuries, and they drew about 6.8 million visits in 2024, with the TEA/AECOM index reporting 6,825,000. That makes them the second most visited museum on this list and the most visited in Italy. The museums trace their origins to 1506, when Pope Julius II put the ancient statue of Laocoon on public display, and they have grown ever since into a route of galleries that runs for miles through the Vatican palaces.

The single greatest work on the route is the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo painted the ceiling between 1508 and 1512. The ceiling runs from the Creation to the Flood across the chapel’s vault, and the Last Judgment covers the altar wall. The chapel is the endpoint of the museum route, so every visitor passes through it. Before the chapel, the galleries hold the Raphael Rooms, painted by Raphael and his workshop for Pope Julius II, the Gallery of Maps, a corridor of 40 topographical frescoes painted in the 1580s, and one of the world’s great collections of classical sculpture, including the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoon itself.

The collection holds about 70,000 works, though only a fraction is on display at any time. Because the route is one way and the crowds move in a single stream, the visit can feel rushed at peak hours. The practical answer is to book the earliest entry available and to walk the galleries briskly until you reach the Raphael Rooms, then slow down. For a Rome itinerary that pairs the Vatican with the rest of the city, see our day trips from Rome guide and our guide to where to stay in Rome.

3. The British Museum, London, United Kingdom

The British Museum was founded in 1753 and opened to the public in 1759, and it describes itself as the first national public museum in the world. It drew 6,479,952 visits in 2024, according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, making it the most visited attraction in the United Kingdom for the second year in a row. Admission is free, which is part of the reason for the crowds, and part of the reason the museum matters so much to London.

The collection holds more than 8 million objects, spanning two million years of human history and every inhabited continent. Its most famous single object is the Rosetta Stone, a slab of dark granite carved in 196 BC and found by French soldiers in Egypt in 1799. The stone carries the same decree in three scripts, and it gave scholars the key to reading Egyptian hieroglyphs. Near it stand the Parthenon sculptures, carved in Athens in the fifth century BC and brought to London in the early 1800s, whose ownership remains disputed between the museum and Greece. The Egyptian galleries hold mummies and the colossal bust of Ramesses II, and the Sutton Hoo treasure, buried in an Anglo-Saxon ship in the seventh century and excavated in 1939, anchors the museum’s British collections.

The museum’s breadth is also its challenge. A visitor who tries to see everything will see nothing well. The better plan is to choose two or three galleries, such as Egypt, Greece, and the Americas, and to treat the Great Court, the glass roofed hall at the museum’s center, as a place to rest between them. London museums are mostly free, and many keep different hours through the week, so check opening days before you go. Our guide to museums open on Monday lists the ones that stay open at the start of the week.

4. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, known to everyone as the Met, was founded in 1870 and is the largest art museum in the United States. It drew 5,727,000 visits in the TEA/AECOM 2024 figures, making it the most visited museum in the United States on this list. Its permanent collection holds more than 2 million works, from a 5,000 year span of world culture, in a building on Fifth Avenue at the edge of Central Park.

The Met’s strength is range. The Egyptian wing holds the Temple of Dendur, an Egyptian temple built around 15 BC and given to the United States by Egypt, rebuilt stone by stone inside a glass hall. The American Wing covers painting, sculpture, and furniture from the colonial period to the early twentieth century. The European paintings galleries hold five Vermeers, a large group of Rembrandts, and the largest collection of European paintings outside Europe. The Costume Institute stages the fashion exhibition that opens the Met Gala each year, the museum’s best known public event.

The museum also runs a second site, the Cloisters, in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan, which holds medieval art in a building assembled from European cloisters. A single admission covers both sites on the same day. The Met’s scale rewards a plan: pick one wing, see it properly, and leave the rest for a return visit. Pair the Met with the rest of the city using our weekend getaway in New York guide.

5. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

The State Hermitage Museum was founded in 1764, when Catherine the Great began buying paintings for the Winter Palace, and it is still housed in the Winter Palace and its neighboring buildings on the Neva River. It drew about 3.6 million visits in 2024, and it holds about 3 million items, the largest collection on this list by count. The museum’s own history makes a simple point: this began as an imperial collection, and it still feels like one.

The holdings cover the full range of European art. The Italian Renaissance rooms hold two paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, including the Benois Madonna, and works by Raphael, Titian, and Michelangelo. The Dutch galleries hold a large group of Rembrandts, and the French collection runs from Poussin through the Impressionists to Matisse and Picasso. The museum also holds the Gold of the Scythians, ancient goldwork from the steppes, and an Egyptian collection that includes mummies and sculpture.

The Hermitage’s size is the practical problem. The Winter Palace alone has hundreds of rooms, and the museum states that walking through every gallery would take days. Most visitors choose the state rooms of the palace itself, the Italian Renaissance, and the Dutch paintings, and that is a full day. Note also that visitor numbers here reflect a museum that has lost most of its international audience since 2022, so the 2024 figure is lower than the 4 million plus it drew before the pandemic. Check current travel guidance for Russia before planning a visit.

6. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

The Museo del Prado opened in 1819, and it is the great museum of Spanish painting. It drew 3,457,057 visits in 2024, a record for the museum and a rise of about 7 percent on 2023, according to figures reported by the Spanish news agency EFE. The Prado’s collection is narrower than the Louvre’s or the Met’s, and that is its strength: it goes deep rather than wide.

The single work to see first is Las Meninas, painted by Diego Velazquez in 1656. The painting shows the young Infanta Margarita with her attendants, and Velazquez himself standing at his easel, in a room that seems to extend into the space where the viewer stands. It is one of the most studied paintings in the world, and it rewards a long look. Nearby hang Velazquez’s portraits of the Spanish court, Goya’s dark and unsettling Black Paintings, and the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, a triptych of paradise, earthly pleasure, and hell that has puzzled viewers for five centuries.

The Prado holds more than 7,500 paintings, and its Spanish collection is the most complete anywhere. The Italian and Flemish galleries add Titian, Rubens, and Bruegel, much of it collected by the Spanish Habsburgs. The museum is compact enough to see well in half a day, and its free evening hours draw local visitors, so mornings are the quietest time. The Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza, and the Reina Sofia sit within a short walk of each other on the Paseo del Arte, and a visitor with two days can cover all three.

7. The National Gallery, London, United Kingdom

The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square was founded in 1824, and it is the youngest of the great European national galleries on this list. It drew 3,203,451 visits to its Trafalgar Square site in 2024, according to the gallery’s own figures, in its bicentenary year. Admission is free, as at the British Museum, and the gallery sits at the center of London, which makes it the easiest great museum in the world to walk into on a whim.

The collection holds about 2,300 paintings, and its strength is that it is a survey of Western European painting from the thirteenth century to 1900, chosen picture by picture rather than inherited as a royal collection. The highlights are famous enough to need little introduction: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, painted in 1888, and his Chair; Monet’s Water Lilies; Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire; Constable’s The Hay Wain; and Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks. The gallery’s 2024 exhibition of Van Gogh drew 334,589 visits, the most successful ticketed exhibition in its history.

Because the collection is small by the standards of this list, it is the most visitable. Two hours cover the highlights, and the rooms are arranged roughly chronologically, so a visitor can walk from the medieval panels to the Impressionists in a single line. The Sainsbury Wing, reopened in May 2025 after renovation, holds the early Renaissance collection and is the best place to start.

8. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

The Uffizi Gallery occupies the offices, or uffizi, built for Cosimo I de Medici beginning in 1560, and it opened to the public as a museum in 1769. It drew about 2.9 million visits in 2024, according to the Art Newspaper’s annual survey. The figure counts the gallery itself; the wider Uffizi complex, including the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, reported a higher total, so the two numbers describe different things and should not be compared directly.

The Uffizi holds the world’s greatest collection of Italian Renaissance painting. Its two most famous works hang near each other: Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, painted in the 1480s, and his Primavera, from the same decade. Both were painted for the Medici, and both show the mythological world the Medici wanted to be associated with. Nearby are Leonardo’s Annunciation, Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo, and the only easel painting by Michelangelo in Florence, along with works by Raphael, Titian, and Caravaggio.

The museum is arranged chronologically, which makes it a walk through the history of Italian art, from the medieval panels of Giotto to the Venetian masters. The top floor holds the Renaissance core and the corridor with views over the Arno, and it is also the most crowded part of the building. Booking a timed entry is essential in spring and summer. Florence is also home to several UNESCO-listed sites, and our guide to UNESCO sites in Italy covers them.

9. Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States

The Museum of Modern Art, known as MoMA, was founded in 1929, and it is the youngest museum on this list and the only one devoted entirely to modern and contemporary art. It drew about 2.7 million visits in 2024 (2,657,377), according to the Art Newspaper’s annual survey. Its collection holds about 200,000 works, from painting and sculpture to film, photography, design, and architecture.

The most famous work in the museum is Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, painted in 1889, which hangs on the fifth floor among the early modern galleries. Near it are Monet’s Water Lilies triptych, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, painted in 1907, and Matisse’s The Dance. The design collection holds objects as ordinary as a helicopter and as familiar as the original Apple Macintosh, which is the point: MoMA treats design as art, and its galleries show how everyday objects were made.

MoMA’s building in midtown Manhattan was rebuilt and expanded in 2019, and the galleries are arranged so that a visitor can move from the 1880s to the present in a single upward walk. Free admission on Friday evenings draws the largest crowds, so a weekday morning is the better choice. Our guide to places of interest in New York puts MoMA alongside the city’s other essential stops.

10. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Rijksmuseum was founded in 1800 in The Hague and moved to Amsterdam in 1808, and it is the national museum of the Netherlands. It welcomed about 2.5 million visitors in 2024, according to the museum’s own press release, with more than 900,000 of them from the Netherlands and 445,000 of them children. The museum’s building on Museumplein is a nineteenth century palace of Dutch art, and its collection holds about 1 million objects, from medieval sculpture to twentieth century design.

One painting dominates the museum: Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, painted in 1642. It is a group portrait of a civic militia company, more than 3 meters high and 4 meters wide, and it hangs in its own hall at the end of the Gallery of Honour. The museum began removing the painting’s varnish layer in November 2024, as part of a long conservation project, so visitors may see it under study. Around it hang Vermeer’s Milkmaid and Woman Holding a Balance, and the Dutch Golden Age galleries that make this the best single museum for seventeenth century Dutch painting.

The Rijksmuseum is unusual on this list for the share of its audience that is local. More than a third of its 2024 visitors came from the Netherlands, which says something about how the Dutch use their national museum. For an international visitor, the Gallery of Honour and the Night Watch are the essential stop, and the library, a working art history library with a reading room visitors can enter, is the quiet surprise.

How to Choose Which Museums to Visit

No traveler will visit all ten museums on a single trip, and no one should try. The list is a menu, not an itinerary, and the right choice depends on what you want from a museum. Three questions help.

First, what kind of art do you love. If you want the full sweep of world history, go to the British Museum or the Met, where a single building covers continents and millennia. If you want painting at its highest level, go to the Prado for Spanish painting, the Uffizi for the Italian Renaissance, or the National Gallery for a compact survey. If you want modern art, MoMA is the only museum on this list built for it.

Second, how much time do you have. The Louvre, the Vatican Museums, and the Hermitage each need a full day, and even then you will see a fraction of what they hold. The National Gallery, the Rijksmuseum, and the Prado can be seen well in half a day. The Uffizi and the Met sit in between, at about four hours for the highlights. A museum seen properly in three hours beats a museum rushed in six.

Third, how do you feel about crowds. The Louvre, the Vatican Museums, and the Uffizi are the most crowded museums on this list, and all three now use timed entry, so book ahead and arrive at your time slot. The British Museum and the National Gallery are free and therefore busy at weekends, but quiet on weekday mornings. The Hermitage and the Prado are the calmest of the ten at most times of year.

One practical note applies to all ten: check opening days and hours on the museum’s own site before you travel. Hours change for holidays, for renovation, and for special exhibitions, and a museum’s own site is the only reliable source. Ticket prices change too, and this article does not quote them for that reason.

FAQ

What is the most visited museum in the world?

By attendance, the Palace Museum in Beijing, with 17 million visits in 2024 according to the TEA/AECOM Museum Index 2024. Among the general art and history museums on this list, the Louvre leads, with about 8.7 million visits in 2024. The distinction matters: the Palace Museum is a palace complex, and the TEA/AECOM index counts it alongside museums, while the Louvre is a museum in the ordinary sense.

Which museum has the largest collection?

By count of items held, the British Museum, with more than 8 million objects. The State Hermitage Museum holds about 3 million items, but the two museums count differently: the British Museum’s figure includes vast numbers of small archaeological finds and study objects, while the Hermitage’s figure is dominated by artworks. Both dwarf the Louvre’s 380,000 objects, which is itself one of the largest art collections in the world.

Which of the top 10 museums are free to enter?

The British Museum and the National Gallery in London are free, as are most national museums in the United Kingdom. The others on this list charge admission, though many offer free hours or free entry for young visitors, students, or residents of their own country. Check the museum’s own site for current terms, because free hours change.

How long should I spend at the Louvre?

Plan a full day, and accept that you will not see everything. The museum holds more than 380,000 objects, and its own guidance is that a visitor who walks briskly past every work on display would need days. A realistic plan is three highlights, the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory, plus one department chosen in advance, such as Egyptian antiquities or Italian Renaissance painting.

Can you see the Mona Lisa without a long wait?

Not at peak hours. The Mona Lisa is the most crowded single work in any museum on this list, and the room around it is often full by mid-morning. The Louvre caps daily admissions at 30,000 visitors, which limits the total, but it does not empty the Mona Lisa room. Book the earliest entry slot available, go to the Mona Lisa first, and then see the rest of the museum at your own pace.

What is the oldest museum on this list?

The British Museum, founded in 1753 and opened to the public in 1759, is the oldest museum on this list and the first national public museum in the world. The Uffizi building is older, begun in 1560, but it opened as a public museum only in 1769. The Vatican Museums trace their origins to 1506, but they grew from a papal collection rather than being founded as a public museum.

Sources & references

• Themed Entertainment Association and AECOM, TEA/AECOM Museum Index 2024, published August 2025, as reported by blooloop, "The world's 20 most visited museums". Attendance figures for the Louvre, Vatican Museums, British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of China, Palace Museum, and Natural History Museum, London.
• Musee du Louvre press release, "8.7 million visitors to the Musee du Louvre in 2024", reproduced by ArtDaily, 2025. Louvre 2024 attendance, visitor mix, and daily admission cap context.
• The British Museum, britishmuseum.org. Foundation in 1753, opening in 1759, collection of more than 8 million objects, and the Rosetta Stone.
• Vatican Museums, museivaticani.va. Origins in 1506, the Sistine Chapel, and the collection of about 70,000 works.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, metmuseum.org. Foundation in 1870, collection of more than 2 million works, and the Temple of Dendur.
• The State Hermitage Museum, hermitagemuseum.org. Foundation in 1764 and the collection of about 3 million items.
• Museo Nacional del Prado, museodelprado.es. Opening in 1819 and the collection of Spanish painting.
• The National Gallery, London, nationalgallery.org.uk, 2024 visitor figures release. 3,203,451 visits to the Trafalgar Square site in 2024, and the Van Gogh exhibition attendance.
• Gallerie degli Uffizi, uffizi.it. Building begun in 1560, public opening in 1769, and the Botticelli holdings.
• Rijksmuseum press release, "The Rijksmuseum in 2024", rijksmuseum.nl, 19 December 2024. About 2.5 million visitors in 2024, and the Night Watch conservation project.
• Museum of Modern Art, moma.org. Foundation in 1929 and the collection of about 200,000 works.
• The Art Newspaper, annual survey of museum attendance, April 2025, as compiled in the List of most-visited museums. 2024 figures for the State Hermitage Museum, the Uffizi Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art.
• Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, 2024 figures, as reported by The London Weekly. British Museum 6,479,952 visits in 2024.
• Museo Nacional del Prado 2024 attendance, 3,457,057 visits, as reported by EFE via The Spain News, January 2025.