Bar chart — Museum visitors in summer and winter, 2003

The bar chart shows how many people, in thousands, visited five museums in one city during the summer and winter of 2003.

Overall, most of the museums drew considerably larger crowds in summer than in winter, the Art Gallery being the notable exception. The Science Museum was the most popular venue in summer, but it lost that position to the Art Gallery in winter.

Three museums were far busier in summer. The Science Museum welcomed 415 thousand visitors in that season, the highest figure on the chart, against 290 thousand in winter. The History Museum's winter attendance, at 176 thousand, was little more than half its summer total of 342 thousand, while the seasonal gap was widest in relative terms at the Maritime Museum, whose 64 thousand winter visitors amounted to only about a third of the 187 thousand recorded in summer.

The remaining two venues did not follow this pattern. The Art Gallery attracted 238 thousand people in summer but 305 thousand in winter, which put it 15 thousand ahead of the Science Museum in the colder season. Visitor numbers at the Toy Museum were barely affected by the season, at 96 and 92 thousand respectively; it was the least visited museum in summer, yet in winter it comfortably outperformed the Maritime Museum.