(Yicai Global) May 26 -- After being toppled from its spot as the world's most visited museum in 2016, the Louvre Museum in the French capital has regained its No. 1 position last year, followed by Palace Museum housed in the Forbidden City in Beijing, according to a recent museum index.

Louvre Museum welcomed 8.1 million visitors last year, a nearly 10 percent increase over its 2016 attendance numbers, according to the 12th annual Theme Index and Museum Index recently published by the Themed Entertainment Association, TEA, an international non-profit organization representing the field, and Aecom, a US engineering and architectural consultancy firm.

Louvre Museum is home to masterpieces including Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

Palace Museum, which edged out the Louvre to become the world's most popular museum in 2016, dropped to the No. 2 spot, with about 8 million visitors. Washington's National Air and Space Museum and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art tied for the third spot, with 7 million visitors each last year.  National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, ranked 13th with 4.43 million visitors.

Overall, global museum attendance was nearly flat last year, with a 0.2 percent increase in attendance over 2016 among the world's top 20 museums, which collectively welcomed 108 million visitors in 2017.

Editor: Mevlut Katik