Last year over 45 million people visited Scottish attractions, with Edinburgh Castle and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum attracting the biggest crowds, according to VisitScotland’s Scottish Visitor Attraction Monitor.

Overall visitor numbers to Scottish attractions increased by 1.8 per cent in 2007 to 45.7 million.

The most visited paid attraction for 2007 was Edinburgh Castle, recording over 1.2 million visitors and maintaining its position as the most visited paid attraction in Scotland since records began in 1991, followed by Edinburgh Zoo with Edinburgh Bus Tours third.

The most visited free attraction was Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum with 2.23 million visitors followed by the National Gallery of Scotland and the National Museum of Scotland.

The-opening of Shetland Museum and Archive gave Shetland visitor attraction numbers an overall boost of 41% in 2007.

Other attractions which performed well in 2007 include:

• the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick which saw an increase in visitor numbers of 26.3% 
• St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, which experienced an increase of 21.4%.
• the Falkirk Wheel also performed well, seeing an increase of 17.5% in visitors comparing 2007 with 2006.
  

The annual Visitor Attraction Monitor is compiled on behalf of national tourism agency VisitScotland by the independent research body the Moffat Centre for Travel and Tourism Business Development and represents around 700 visitor attractions across the country.

For the Monitor go to www.visitscotland.org/visitor_attraction_monitor_2007