Italy is characterized by one of the largest artistic heritages in the world. Let's try to analyze some numbers together to better understand the incredible richness of Italy's artistic and cultural heritage.
The data we will analyze refer to the pre-Covid-19 pandemic years (2018 and 2019) and to the recovery years of 2024, and concern only state-owned museums and archaeological sites.
In fact, there is no single official data that sums up civic museums, private museums, foundations, ecclesiastical museums, and university museums. For these, data must be collected city by city or cluster by cluster.
According to ISTAT sources, this immense heritage included 4,416 units in 2022 (approximately 450 state-owned and 3966 non-state-owned) among museums, archaeological areas, and monuments, distributed throughout Italy, divided as follows:
• 3,440 museums, galleries, or collections,
• 363 archaeological areas and parks,
• 614 monuments and monumental complexes.
In 2024, Italy continues to be a magnet for foreign travelers, who concentrate a large part of their spending in the major art cities. Rome and Milan lead the ranking, together absorbing over a quarter of the total turnover generated by foreign visitors.
Venice and Florence follow closely, remaining among the most beloved destinations and contributing to that core of provinces which, overall, collects almost three quarters of the total expenditure of foreigners.
This data confirms how the cultural appeal of our historic cities continues to be one of the main drivers of international tourism, although official updated percentages on the exact weight of cultural tourism compared to the overall tourism market for 2024 are not yet available.
In 2024, tourist flows recorded by Istat exceed 139 million arrivals and 466 million overnight stays, with the latter showing growth compared to the previous year.
It is noted that growth is driven by foreigners (53%), for whom the main reason for vacationing in Italy is its art cities. According to ISTAT data, in 2024, foreign arrivals reached 74 million, an 8.9% increase compared to 2023. Furthermore, the incidence of cultural stays and holidays in art cities has further increased, reaching 56.4% of overall tourist spending and confirming itself as the preferred type of tourism for foreign visitors.
The artistic heritage of Southern Italy remains largely underexploited, an area that could reap the greatest growth benefits in the future.
2024 showed excellent performance compared to the pre-Covid era.
The number of visitors to state-owned Italian museums and archaeological sites increased from 55 million visitors in the pre-Covid years (2018 and 2019) to almost 61 million in 2024 (source: MiBACT).
Leading the way are:
1. The Colosseum-Palatine-Roman Forum circuit (over 7.5 million visitors), historically the most visited site in Italy, which in 2024 recorded a 20% increase compared to 2023 and an impressive 93% increase compared to 2018/2019, effectively almost doubling its visitors.
2. Uffizi Galleries (almost 5.3 million visitors)
3. Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia (5 million visitors)
4. Pompeii (over 4 million visitors).
Below is the complete table with the 55 most visited state-owned sites in Italy in 2018 and 2019, compared with 2024 (final data).
In the ranking, we find 15 in Lazio, 11 in Campania, 6 in Lombardy, 5 in Tuscany, 3 each in Veneto, Piedmont, and Puglia, 2 in Sardinia and 2 in Calabria, 2 in Marche, and 1 each in Liguria, Emilia Romagna, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
