During the recently finished 2024, 4,754,500 people visited Barcelona’s municipal museums and exhibition centres, including both the facilities managed by the ICUB and those museums that are maintained with municipal funding.  Among the most visited museums was -once again- the Picasso Museum in Barcelona (pictured. Photo Marc Zambrano), which attracted more than 1.1 million visitors, according to data compiled and processed by the Technical Office of the Barcelona Institute of Culture.

The overall number of visitors to Barcelona’s municipal museums has increased by 6.6 per cent compared to the previous year. Among the possible causes of the increase are the inauguration this year of the new Martorell Exhibition Centre – Museum of Natural Sciences or successful initiatives that have brought many additional visitors to the centres, such as Llum BCN, La Mercè or the Creation and Museums programme that forms part of the Grec Festival of Barcelona.

Among the spaces and facilities that accumulate more visits, as we said, the Picasso Museum (the exhibition ‘Fernande Olivier, Pablo Picasso and his friends’ stands out), and also heritage facilities and spaces ranging from Castell de Montjuïc and  MUHBA to the Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria, spaces that have received more than 700,000 visitors during 2024 (the Castell, 717,500 visitors; the Born, a total of 977,000; and the MUHBA, 822,500). In these centres, exhibition proposals such as ‘Under the Influence of Gaudí’ and ‘Ressons de la memòria’ stand out, with more than 169,000 and 115,000 visitors, respectively.

The Design Museum – DHUB recorded 183,000 visitors, partly thanks to exhibitions such as ‘The Ocean Talks. New ecologies and new economies of the sea’ and “100 objects from IKEA that we would have liked to have at VINÇON”, with 30,000 visitors each.

Exhibition spaces such as La Virreina Centre de la Imatge have achieved a four per cent increase in the number of visitors, with the exhibition ‘Jeff Wall. Contes possibles’ as the most visited exhibition. On the other hand, both La Capella and Fabra i Coats and the Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona have seen a reduction in the total number of visitors due to the improvement works that have kept the spaces closed for a certain period of time. Despite this, however, the exhibitions were well attended by the public.

Among visitors, the local public makes up a quarter of the total, with a volume of foreign visitors headed by European and American tourists. Therefore, one out of every four visitors to Barcelona’s museums lives in the city of Barcelona. Catalonia as a whole, including those living in Barcelona, accounts for about thirty percent of visitors. Those from outside Catalonia, on the other hand, account for three per cent, including visitors from Madrid (33%), the Valencian Community and Andalusia, both with 12%. With regard to foreign visitors, 21% were from the USA, followed by Italy (10%), France (9%) and the United Kingdom (7%). Finally, visitors from China and South Korea accounted for 3% of all non-Spanish visitors.

For more information on the figures for visitors to the city’s museums, facilities and municipal heritage sites, please consult the website of the Technical Office of the Barcelona Institute of Culture.