Think of art museums in Italy, and you’ll come up with the Uffizi and Pitti in Florence, the Accademia and Guggenheim in Venice, the Borghese in Rome, and perhaps a few more—but almost certainly not the National Museum of Umbria in Perugia, which ranked highest on a government-sponsored survey of visitor impressions.
The study, carried out by Travel Appeal, which is advising the government on better ways of promoting the museums, studied visitor comments on social media sites such as TripAdvisor, Facebook, Google+ and more.
Their findings put the Perugia museum on top with 96.6% approval of the quality of the museum’s exhibits and layouts, and 93.85% overall positive views. The museum houses 800 years of Italian paintings in 40 galleries.
Travel Appeal says the data is only half the job: it found that most of the museums have websites, but often out of date, and with no English pages. The National Museum of Umbria even has an incorrect phone number on its page. TA’s CEO says “You see?…This is the problem. In Italy, museums are seen as being about preserving culture, rather than promoting it.”
