The Louvre in Paris has topped the list of the most visited art museums of 2012, according to the Art Newspaper.
The publication's annual (ежегодный)survey (обзор) found 9.7 million people visited the French institute - one million more than 2011.
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was the second most-visited venue (место), with three London museums taking the third, fourth and fifth spots.
The most popular exhibition of the year was a show of Dutch Old Masters at Tokyo's Metropolitan Art Museum.
Masterpieces from the Mauritshuis, which included Vermeer's 1665 painting Girl with aPearl (жемчужный)Earring (серьга), brought 10,500 visitors a day to the Tokyo gallery between June and September 2012.
The paintings had been onloan (кредит) from The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in the Hague, which is closed forrefurbishment (ремонт) until mid-2014. 'Extraordinary year'
The collection will tour the US and Italy before returning to the Netherlands next year.
Visitor numbers at the Louvre, which has topped the annual list of most popular venues since it began in 2007, were boosted by the museum's new wing of Islamic art.
While the position of the top 10 venues showed little change on the previous year, British museums had an "excellent" 2012 according to the survey, boosted by increased visitors to London for the summer Olympics.
Tate Modern, which attracted a large number visitors thanks to a Damien Hirst retrospective and the Tanks installation (установки), moved up a place to fourth on the list with 5.3 million visitors - up from 4.8 million in 2011.
It pushed the National Gallery down to fifth place. Alex Beard, deputy (заместитель) director at the Tate said its versatile (универсальное) offering helped bring more people to gallery.
"It has been an extraordinary year at Tate Modern, opening the world's first museum galleries permanently (постоянно) dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works alongside an outstanding (наряду с выдающимися) exhibition programme which has undoubtedly fuelled the increase in visitors," he said.
Do you enjoy exhibitions ? Would you like to visit the Louvre ? How many people visited the Louvre in 2012 ? What is the second most-visited venue ? Did you hear about the picture " Girl with a Pearl Earring" ?
I enjoy museums and exhibitions so much! But unfortunatly, i rarely visit it. The most beautiful museum i have attended is the "Hermitage" in St. Petersburg. I would be happy to see the famous museums of different countries and cities. I dream of it!
