Italian Museums Rated and Ranked 2008
The Touring Club Italia, a sort of AAA for Italy that puts out many quality guidebooks (especially on Italy’s lesser known regions), releases each year a dossier that rates and ranks Italy’s museums. According to Dossier Musei 2008 (PDF, in Italian) and this article from Corriere della Sera, Italy’s museums have a lot to be desired in terms of service, facilities, and access for the disabled and children. The Corriere article states:
Services…are the Achilles heel of Italian museums. It has to be said that the majority (62%) of museums devote more and more time to organising exhibitions and diversifying their calendar. But apart from a very few (eight) museums open all year round, Monday is still closing day. The Touring Club experts point out: ‘That means you put off people taking a long weekend. It’s no coincidence that the Louvre closes on Tuesdays.’
So, Italy’s museums aren’t very service-oriented: It took an entire report to figure that out?? 
The dossier also serves to list the previous year’s 30 most popular museums. If you’re like us, some of the top 30 will surprise you. Here’s the full list:
1. Vatican Museums
2. Excavations at Pompeii
3. Uffizi Gallery
4. Palazzo Ducale, Venice
5. Acquario di Genova
6. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence
7. Opera di Santa Croce, Florence
8. Bioparco, Rome
9. Museo Centrale del Risorgimento, Rome
10. Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome
11. Galleria Borghese, Rome
12. Museo di San Marco, Venice
13. Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino
14. Capitoline Museums, Rome
15. Museo delle Antichità Egizie (Egyptian Antiquities), Torino
16. Reggia di Caserta, Caserta
17. Museo Arch. Reg. Villa Imperiale del Casale, Piazza Armerina
18. Palazzo Vecchio-Quartieri Monumentali, Florence
19. Medici Chapels, Florence
20. National Museum of Science and Technology “Leonardo da Vinci,” Milan
21. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
22. Saint Peter’s Basilica (Treasures of)
23. National Archeological Museum, Naples
24. Natural History Museum, Milan
25. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice
26. Leonardo’s “The Last Supper,” Milan
27. Excavations of Ostia Antica and Museum, Province of Rome
28. Palazzo Madama, Torino
29. Temples of Paestum
30. Excavations at Herculaneum
2 Comments on “Italian Museums Rated and Ranked 2008”
#26 isn’t higher on the list because it only accepts a certain number of visitors per day, and I believe now you need a reservation to view it. They limit the number of visitors because the painting is deteriorating so quickly.
I’d be interested to know what their criteria was for ranking them?
According to the article, the museums that I have listed are ranked according to visits per year. They performed other visitation-based rankings of particular museums, such as art or science museums, too.