The World’s Most-Visited Museum Isn’t the Louvre and the Winner Drew 19 Million People

The Louvre may be the museum most travelers instinctively associate with massive crowds, but it did not come close to taking the top spot in the latest global attendance ranking.

The Palace Museum in Beijing, better known as the Forbidden City, was the most-visited museum in the world in 2025, drawing 19 million visitors. That was more than double the Louvre’s 9.046 million and enough to place the Paris landmark only fourth overall. Time Out highlighted the new ranking from the Themed Entertainment Association, which tracks attendance at major cultural attractions around the world.

Beijing Did Not Just Take First Place, It Dominated the Top of the Entire Ranking

The Palace Museum was not China’s only major winner. Beijing’s Summer Palace ranked second with 17.381 million visitors, while the Museum of Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site in Xi’an, home to the famous Terracotta Army, came in third with 10.97 million.

That means the top three spots all went to Chinese institutions before the Louvre appeared at No. 4. China placed 12 museums in the global top 20, making East Asia the clear center of gravity in the latest ranking.

For American travelers used to seeing Paris, London and New York dominate cultural bucket lists, that is a notable shift. The ranking suggests that some of the world’s biggest museum crowds are now concentrated in destinations many U.S. tourists still do not automatically place at the top of a first-time international itinerary.

The Louvre Still Leads Outside China, but Its Global Dominance Looks Very Different

The Louvre welcomed just over 9 million visitors in 2025, enough to make it the highest-ranked museum outside China but not enough to challenge the top three.

The Palace of Versailles followed in fifth place with 8.4 million visitors, while London’s Natural History Museum ranked seventh and the Vatican Museums eighth. The British Museum came in 13th.

In the United States, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was the highest-ranked American institution, placing 17th with nearly 6 million visitors.

That gap is striking. The Palace Museum welcomed more than three times as many visitors as The Met over the same period.

The Forbidden City’s Scale Helps Explain Why So Many People Keep Coming

The Palace Museum occupies the vast former imperial palace complex at the heart of Beijing. It was home to Chinese emperors for centuries and today contains an enormous collection of art, ceremonial objects, textiles, ceramics, calligraphy and other material from the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The institution is not a conventional museum building that visitors can cross in an hour. The site itself is the experience, with courtyards, gates, halls and ceremonial spaces spread across a huge historic complex.

That combination of architecture, history and national significance helps explain why visitor numbers are so high. The museum also remains a central stop for domestic tourism in China, which gives it a scale advantage over many European and American institutions.

For U.S. Travelers, the Ranking Is a Reminder That the Biggest Cultural Crowds Are Not Always Where You Expect

The result does not mean the Louvre has suddenly become less important. It remains one of the world’s most famous museums and the most visited institution outside China in the latest ranking.

What the numbers do show is that global museum travel is much broader than the usual Paris-London-New York circuit.

Time Out’s report makes that especially clear: East Asian institutions now occupy a huge share of the world’s most-visited museum list, while the best-known Western museums are no longer automatically at the top.

For American travelers building future Asia itineraries, Beijing’s Palace Museum now comes with another distinction beyond its history and architecture.

It is officially the museum more people visited than any other in the world last year.