According to the Art Newspaper, The Louvre in Paris topped the list of the most visited art museums of 2012.
The newspaper’s annual survey found 9.7 million people visited the French institute – around one million more than 2011.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York came second on the list, with three London museums taking the third, fourth and fifth positions.
The most popular exhibition of the year was a display of Dutch Old Masters at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Art Museum.
Masterpieces from the Mauritshuis, which included Vermeer’s celebrated and enigmatic Girl with a Pearl Earring, brought 10,500 daily visitors to the Tokyo gallery between June and September 2012.
The collection will tour Italy and the US before returning to the Netherlands next year.
The Louvre has topped the annual list of most popular venues since it was introduced in 2007, with visitor numbers boosted by the museum’s new wing of Islamic art.
While the position of the top 10 venues presented little change on the previous year, British museums had an exceptional 2012 according to the survey, boosted by increased visitors to London for the summer Olympics.
Tate Modern, which attracted a large number of visitors thanks to a Damien Hirst retrospective and the Tanks installation, moved up to fourth place on the list with 5.3 million visitors – up from 4.8 million in 2011.
Deputy Director at the Tate, Alex Beard, said its versatile offering helped bring more visitors to the gallery.
He said: “It has been an extraordinary year at Tate Modern, opening the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works alongside an outstanding exhibition programme which has undoubtedly fuelled the increase in visitors.”
Remarkably, none of the 20 most popular exhibitions were held at any of the top five most visited galleries.
An exhibition of 19th Century Italian paintings at St Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum was the third most-visited with 7,747 visitors a day.
And in London, David Hockney’s A Bigger Picture – which featured large scale landscapes inspired by his native Yorkshire alongside innovative iPad drawings – attracted 7,512 daily visitors to the Royal Academy to become the fifth most-visited venue.
Due to its popularity, the gallery extended its opening times for the show’s final week, opening until midnight on weekdays.
Meanwhile, in the Art Newspaper’s list, the Leonardo blockbuster at the National Gallery was the top ranked exhibition to showcase pre-20th Century works, with 3,985 visitors a day flocking to view the remarkable display of Renaissance paintings.
