NEW YORK, NY.- The National September 11 Memorial & Museum today announced that more than five million people have visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum since it opened in May 2014.

Visitors have traveled from all 50 states and more than 150 countries. In addition to the United States, the nations represented in the greatest numbers include the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany and France.

In the Museum’s first full year of operation, it welcomed nearly 2.7 million visitors.

“People across the nation and throughout the world recognize the Museum as the leading institution for understanding the history of 9/11, and that it uniquely presents this history in the very place where it happened,” 9/11 Memorial President Joe Daniels said. “The millions of people coming to the Museum are a profound testament to the important stories of the 9/11 victims, the rescuers, the recovery workers and the survivors. We are grateful to each visitor for the support and for helping us to forever preserve these stories.”

“From global leaders and dignitaries, to people from all walks of life and those who have a personal connection to what happened here, our visitors are helping to power the Museum’s mission of safeguarding the history, honoring all who were killed, and teaching the next generation,” 9/11 Memorial Museum Director Alice M. Greenwald said. “Through our youth and family programs, public programs and exhibitions, the Museum is not only a place chronicling the story of 9/11 and how that day continues to shape our world – it is a place of inspiration, reminding each of us of our capacity for compassion and service in the face of tragedy.”

The Museum regularly hosts public programs covering a wide array of topics, from examining America’s fight against the growing ISIS threat to a photographer’s documentation of grassroots memorials that were created after the 2001 attacks. Through its youth and family programs, the Museum has offered age-appropriate lessons about 9/11 to more than 7,500 children since 2014. And more than 12,000 students have participated in student workshops in the Museum’s education center.

Recognizing the significance of the Museum, world leaders and dignitaries have been drawn to the institution.

As part of his first-ever visit to the U.S. in September, Pope Francis led a historic interfaith peace gathering in the Museum. Other recent visitors include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, then-U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and former Navy SEAL Team 6 member Robert O'Neill, who donated to the Museum a uniform shirt worn in the 2011 raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.