Paris has claimed the honor of being home to the world’s top museum — but it’s not the Louvre.
In TripAdvisor’s annual Travelers’ Choice Awards for Museums, the Musée d’Orsay took the top spot for 2018, far ahead of the world’s most visited museum, the Louvre which is ranked seventh.
The TripAdvisor results show that popularity doesn’t always equal likeability. According to the 2017 Theme Index and Museum report, around 8.1 million people visited the Louvre last year making it the most visited museum in the world.
The report credited the 10 percent increase in visits over 2016 to the tourism recovery following terrorist attacks and security concerns in Paris.
But after applying an algorithm that took into account the quantity and quality of reviews and ratings for museums around the world over a 12-month period, Orsay emerged the global winner on TripAdvisor’s list, with many fans describing it as less overwhelming and crowded than the Louvre.
After Orsay, New York’s National 9/11 Memorial and Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art round out the podium.
Overall, the top 10 list is dominated by museums in Europe.
Here are TripAdvisor’s Travelers’ Choice Awards for top museums:
1. Musée d’Orsay – Paris, France
2. The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum – New York City, New York
3. The Metropolitan Museum of Art – New York City, New York
4. The British Museum – London, United Kingdom
5. Prado National Museum – Madrid, Spain
6. Acropolis Museum – Athens, Greece
7. Louvre Museum – Paris, France
8. The National WWII Museum – New Orleans, Louisiana
9. National Museum of Anthropology – Mexico City, Mexico
10. War Remnants Museum – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam