MADRID.- The Museo del Prado, in 2010, concluded the third consecutive year surpassing the 2.7 million annual visitors, a figure that was reached for the first time since the opening of its expansion. The final number of visitors received by the Museum during this year, 2,732,000, has been almost equal to that recorded in 2009, 2,764,155, and in 2008, 2,759,029 the first full year period of the expansion in full operation.

As for the reasons to visit, a 57.58% of the total audience visited the permanent collection only, while the remaining 42.42% came to the Museum to visit the temporary exhibitions.

Among the data to highlight in terms of different types of visitors, it should be noted that visits by groups of students in 2010 not only did not decline compared to 2009 but have seen an increase, by number of participants, 18% which seems to confirm the interest of the 'la Caixa' • Museo del Prado "The art of education" program, launched in October 2009. On its own, the visits of tourist groups also showed a 20% increase over the previous year.

As for the origin of the people who visited the museum in 2010, the data evaluated by sampling in April and November this year, placed the share of public resident in Spain around 43%, with significant predominance of visitors from the Community of Madrid (26.5%), followed by Catalonia (4.1%) and Andalusia (3.2%). Between 57% for non-resident groups in our country, its main countries of origin, according to data extrapolated by the Institute for Tourism Studies in collaboration with the Museum, were Italy (8.4%), USA (7.9%), France (7.3%) and Germany (4.1%).

Website
The Museum's website continued to show a significant increase in 2010, with 4,335,265 visits / year, 10.4% more than in 2009 (3,887,150 hits), the year also saw a notable increase in access by the launch of several new initiatives such as 'Masterpieces of the Prado in Google Earth' online interactive audio guides and videos for all exhibitions, with respect to 2008 (2.415.748 hits), in which year, it was consolidated for the first time an annual rate of access similar to that of the visitors to the Museum following the launch of the current institutional website in late 2007, the figure visits recorded in 2010 represents almost an 80% increase.