This was published 1 year ago
How to beat the crowds at the world's top museums
Welcome to Savvy Traveller – timely advice for your next trip.
The world's most popular museums and galleries have become mosh pits, and if you're determined to see the Mona Lisa or Michelangelo's David you'll need the patience of a Botticelli angel.
Timed entry introduced at many museums has barely dented the problem. If you're after a less crowded museum experience, however, some early research should help, and there are a few things you can do to improve your art-gazing experience once there.
Illustration: Greg StraightCredit: Greg Straight
Top of the list? Find out whether museums have late openings, such as Fridays at the Louvre and Thursdays at Musee d'Orsay in Paris, or Fridays and Saturdays at the Met in New York.
Tour groups are absent and most independent tourists are having dinner. As an added bonus, the mostly local visitors aren't cluttering spaces up by taking selfies, nor are they congregating around the most famous artworks, which they've already seen.
The next best thing is a short visit for an hour before closing, such as after 5pm at the Uffizi in Florence. Avoid free days like smallpox; the money you save won't compensate for the crush.
If you can afford it, book a tour that offers special entry privileges after-hours. You don't just skip the ticket queues and get more insight into the art but have a more peaceful experience although, despite claims of exclusive access, you probably won't be entirely alone.
When considering visiting times in general, websites and apps such as waitamoment.co.uk, avoid-crowds.com and crowdalerts.com give useful advice for major museums and other tourist attractions.
You might not realise that when you Google museums and scroll down on the right-hand side bar in Google's results, you come to a Popular Times section that shows a simple daily graph of average visitor numbers.
You'll soon deduce that the quietest time at the National Palace Museum in Taipei is early Fridays, and at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha early Saturdays, for example.
Many museum websites now provide information about visitor numbers too. The National Palace Museum suggests avoiding 10am to 1pm, its busiest time of day, and April-October, its busiest time of year. The National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC tells you its busiest time is 11am to 4pm, and warns you of school holidays.
Talking of times of year, the couple of weeks before Christmas in those countries that celebrate it often see low visitor numbers at museums. The same is true of winter generally in cold climates, when the stampede of tour groups dwindles substantially.
Irrespective of when you visit, don't be in the thrall of famous artworks. For many the Mona Lisa is a disappointment, and you should ask yourself why you need to see it rather than thousands of the Louvre's other splendid paintings.
The Northern Renaissance galleries, Red Rooms and Egyptian and Islamic collections see far fewer visitors traipse through despite their world-class wonders. Similarly, areas of the Uffizi in Florence such as the sculpture-strewn Corridoio di Levante are barely visited. Quiet is sometimes just a step away from crowds.
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