Do you know for sure what’s the most famous tourist attraction of your country? Well, for Romania, I would have said the House of Parliament. Or maybe Bran Castle. But it looks like I would have been wrong. The most famous attraction in Romania is… Peles Castle. So, as you may wonder what are the top tourist attractions in the world, I’m presenting you today a map (well, several :D) with the top tourist attraction of every country across the globe.
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This top was compiled by Vouchercloud and it is based on the “Things to do” category on TripAdvisor. Some pretty interesting discoveries though 😀
Of course, I first looked at the countries I liked the most and visited recently or those that I plan on visiting soon. I saw that for Austria the Historic Centre of Vienna is the most famous tourist attraction (I would have thought that one of the art museums or the famous Prater would be the top attraction).
For France, the top one is Musee d’Orsay. I really loved this museum, I’ll give you that (and I plan on revisiting it when I’ll be in Paris again), but I would have thought the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre would be given the top attraction in France “title”.
For Germany, Miniatur Wunderland is the top tourist attraction, while for the Czech Republic the Old Town is the highly ranked thing to do.
For the United Kingdom the Harry Potter Studio Tour is the top tourist attraction (again, I would have gone with the Big Ben or Buckingham Palace…), while for Norway the most famous tourist attraction is the Geiranger Fjord.
The Netherlands has the Rijksmuseum, Italy – the Colosseum, Spain – Basilica of Sagrada Familia, and Finland the Fortress of Suomenlinna.
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If we move to America, we see that the Central Park is the top tourist attraction in USA, Niagara Falls in Canada, Iguazu Falls in Brazil, and Machu Picchu in Peru.
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Sydney Harbour is the top tourist attraction in Australia, the Great Wall at Mutianyu in China, and the Taj Mahal for India (no surprise, I’d say, for China and India).
Click on the image to see the larger size.
Another interesting detail is to notice the way the natural, tourist, religious, and historic attractions are spread across the globe, as each top attraction was included in one of these four categories. As I see it, it looks like the religious attractions are fewest in the top – but I don’t know which of the two categories – historic and natural – have the most attractions across the globe.
It’s very interesting though to see what people rate as the top tourist attraction in a country – and even to compare it with what you consider to be the top one in that country. Like I said, for some countries I would have picked the same top tourist attraction that ranked as the top on TripAdvisor, while for others, including mine, I would have picked another one. But that’s a matter of preferences as well.
I’m sorry I can’t mention all the top tourist attractions in all countries, but I’m curious: for your country, did you guess the top attraction or not? What would you have picked?
This is a fascinating map especially seeing which countries are popular for what attraction and surprised at the ones popular for religion. Thanks for sharing