It’s not exactly a scoop to reveal that London is a brilliant visit for those looking to surround themselves with a sea of art as far as the eye can see. On top of sculptures, murals, and architecture, there are hundreds of museums (many of which are free!) to check out some of the finest works, and now the capital city has been recognised for the arty haven that it is.
In a recent study, London tied with Paris to take the crown for the best European capital to visit if you’re an art lover, and it hardly comes as a surprise around these parts.
E-commerce platform Ubuy are who we have to thank for the hard data, after they took on the task of ranking the top 20 European capitals for art lovers, working with a strict points-based system that couldn’t separate the big smoke from the city of love.
Ubuy crunched the numbers with figures on how many galleries each city has; how many offer free entry; the number of monuments and statues; and the number of street artworks, all of which leads to a tidy total score. London and Paris couldn’t be separated, bagging 166 points each meaning the Louvre and the the Tate Modern must now fight a bloody battle to determine a winner (not really).
London enjoyed hefty victories on the first two categories with 259 galleries, 29 of which offering free entry – the next highest for these categories were third-placed Prague (236 total galleries) and 6th-placed Rome (15 galleries with free entry). While we may have come second for our number of monuments and statues at an impressive 347, we were absolutely no match for Paris’ eye-watering 796. When it came to street art, we also had to bow down to a few other cities who surpassed London’s total of 441, which included Minsk (678), Paris (637), Lisbon (637) Berlin (618), and Athens (526).
Despite being a top 20, the list actually features 23 cities to note down if you love a gander at some marvellous creations, since the tie between London & Paris as well as those between Oslo & Madrid in 10th and Belgrade & Sofia in 14th allowed for two more cities to sneak in. Not that we’re complaining – you can never have too many cities on your to-visit lists.
The top European cities for art lovers
- London & Paris
- Prague
- Berlin
- Amsterdam
- Lisbon
- Rome
- Athens
- Vienna
- Budapest
- Oslo & Madrid
- Dublin
- Copenhagen
- Helsinki
- Belgrade & Sofia
- Tallinn
- Brussels
- Bucharest
- Ljubljana
- Minsk
- Reykjavik
Read the full study here!