The National Gallery has today been named as the best rated museum in the UK in the Travellers’ Choice™ awards for Museums, announced by TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel site*.
The London art museum which houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century right up to the 20th century, is also named sixth best rated museum in Europe and twelfth in the world in this year’s awards, which honour top travel spots worldwide based on the millions of valuable reviews and opinions from TripAdvisor travellers.
Susan Foister, Deputy Director and Director of Public Engagement at the National Gallery said, “The National Gallery is extremely proud to be named the best rated museum in the UK in the Travellers’ Choice awards for Museums, announced by TripAdvisor. We want to ensure all our visitors have a great experience and that they really enjoy our collection of some of the best loved paintings in the world, so this is an accolade we relish very much.”
London is also home to the UK’s second best rated museum and eighth best rated in Europe, the British museum. Free to all visitors, the museum is dedicated to human history and culture and consists of some eight million objects.
In fact, the capital boasts a further three winners making it the UK’s biggest winning city with a total of five museums awarded this year. The Victoria and Albert Museum, Churchill War Rooms and the Natural History Museum take fourth, fifth and tenth place in the UK respectively.
It’s not just London that has cause to celebrate this year as UK museums have taken home more Travellers’ Choice awards than any other European country, with seven museums ranked in Europe’s top 25.
The aforementioned National Gallery and British Museum take sixth and eighth place respectively, the Roman Baths Museum in Bath comes in fifteenth and the V&A and Churchill War Rooms in London rank sixteenth and seventeenth respectively. York’s National Railway Museum comes in at nineteenth while the National Museum of Scotland takes its place at twenty-first.
Other winners include Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Brunels’ ss Great Britain in Bristol and London’s Natural History Museum which take eighth, ninth and tenth place in the UK respectively.
Award winners were determined using an algorithm that took into account the quantity and quality of reviews for museums worldwide, gathered over a 12-month period.
“It is clear from the millions of reviews and opinions written by our global community of travellers that London remains home to some of the world’s best loved museums. On top of that, many of the UK’s ten winning museums are free to visit, making them an ideal choice of attraction for the wallet as well as the mind,” commented TripAdvisor spokesperson James Kay.
Taking the coveted title of world’s best museum is the Art Institute of Chicago in the United Sates. Located in Chicago’s Grant Park, the museum was founded in 1879 and now has approximately 300,000 works of art in its permanent collection.
Europe’s number one goes to State Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace in St Petersburg, Russia, a museum of art and culture held in a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors.
See below for top 10 winners in the UK, Europe and the world:
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Museums – UK |
Museums – Europe |
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Museums – World |
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For the complete list of winners from the 2014 Travellers’ Choice Museums, as well as reviews and candid traveller photos, go to: http://www.tripadvisor.com/TravelersChoice-Attractions-cMuseums.
