8.5 million people visited the Louvre in 2009

(Didier Plowy)

The renowned Paris institution announced January 11 that it hosted 8.5 million visitors for the year 2009, the same number of visitors as in 2008 when the Louvre was ranked the world's most visited museum.

For the second year in a row, the Paris museum hit the record figure of 8.5 million visits, while it has exceeded 8 million visitors for the past four years.

Temporary exhibitions attracted a large number of visitors, for instance, 250,000 people saw the Egyptian exhibition Les portes du Ciel (Heaven's gates) and 400,000 people lined up for Titien, Tintoret, Véronèse. Rivalités à Venise (Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivalry in Venice).

A spokesperson for the British Museum, ranked second most visited museum in 2008, told Relaxnews that 5,569,981 people had visited that institution in 2009, a little less than the 5.93 million visitors for 2008, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York (which came in fifth in 2008 with 4.82 million), told Relaxnews that it received 4.8 million visits in 2009.

The announcement made by the Louvre was issued before every museum finished calculating their total of visits for the year. In 2008, the Louvre was number one (8.5 million), the British Museum in London was ranked second (5.93 million), the National Gallery in Washington, DC was third (4.96 million), Tate Modern in London was fourth (4.95 million) and the Metropolitan Museum in New York was fifth (4.82 million).

www.louvre.fr