The National Palace Museum in Taipei and the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung have been ranked among the world’s 20 most popular museums of last year by a US business association.
The California-based Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) released the rankings of global museums and theme parks by attendance last week.
The National Palace Museum, home to one of the world’s largest collections of Chinese artwork and artifacts, came in 13th for attendance last year with 4.41 million visits, an increase of 1.2 percent from 2012. It ranked second in Asia, behind only the National Museum of China in Beijing.
The National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung came in 18th with just short of 3.4 million visits, a 15 percent increase from 2012.
Unsurprisingly, the Louvre in Paris was the world’s most popular museum, attracting more than 9.3 million visits. It was followed by the National Museum of Natural History in Washington in second place with 8 million visits and the National Museum of China in third place.
The Beijing museum, which welcomed 7.45 million visitors, recorded the highest growth of any museum on the list at 38.7 percent.
Rounding out the top five were the National Air and Space Museum in Washington with nearly 7 million visits and the British Museum in London with 6.7 million visits.
The largest decline on the list was seen at the Tate Modern art gallery in London (ranked 12th), where attendance dropped 8.2 percent from the previous year.
Despite the fall, the report concluded that museums had a strong year last year, with overall attendance growing over 7 percent annually.
“The UK again performed well with a number of museums up 15 to 20 percent [in attendance] … The Asian museums were notably up also,” the report said.
As for theme park attendance, nine of the top 10 spots went to Disney parks in the US, Japan and France. Universal Studios Japan, in Osaka, came in ninth.
The TEA brings together creative and entertainment-focused professionals and boasts 8,000 members from about 1,000 firms in 40 countries.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS