London's top tourist attractions 2024: what's on in the capital's most visited sites
What are the most popular visitor attractions in London? Is it the Natural History Museum, Tate Modern or the British Museum? Well, the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions has the answer.
The organisation today released its latest annual survey of the most visited UK sites, which showed 146.6 million visits had been made to its member sites in 2023. Here we explore the most visited attractions in London, and reveal the secret treasures you can’t miss.
1) The British Museum
Visitor numbers in 2023: 5.8 million (up 42%)
It’s astonishing to see the immense hike in visitor numbers to the BM after a frankly god-awful year in which it was revealed that someone had been quietly pinching small artefacts from its stores for years, it lost its director and deputy director, and it came under fire for accepting a massive long term donation from oil and gas company BP.
Apparently none of that has changed the affection in which the public holds it, which is good because aside from the most famous (and often contested) items, there is so much here to see and wonder at, with 2 million years of human history represented.
Among the obvious stuff (Rosetta Stone, Rameses II, mummies etc) there are some extraordinary treasures worth hunting out. The Oxus Treasure, for example - a gobsmacking collection of 180 objects in gold and silver from the Persian period, which were found about 1877–1880.
