When it comes to being a ‘cultural’ city in Australia, we like to think that Melbourne has it in the bag. We enjoy nothing more than boasting about our lively theatre scene, our extensive exhibitions and our historic laneways, telling anyone who’ll listen that Melbourne is up there with the best cities in the world.
And yet, when we heard that our gloomy city was just ranked amongst the best cities in the world for culture lovers, we had to admit we were juuuust a tiny bit surprised. Sure, we obviously rock. But there’s some tough competition out there in the whole wide world.
The study, which was run by the folks over at Adobe Express, analysed 50 cities with a reputation for cultural chops and scored them on a bunch of different criteria. These included the number of libraries, museums, galleries, concerts, historic places and more. The study also factored in each city’s score on the Legatum Prosperity Index, as well as whether or not they’ve been designated a UNESCO City of Literature.
According to Adobe Express, Google searches for ‘cultural holidays’ have increased by a wild 2,500 per cent since the start of this year, so they decided to help the masses determine where to go.
So, which cities came out on top? Perhaps unsurprisingly, Paris has been crowned as the world’s most inspiring cultural city with an impressive score of 8.52/10. Second place went to London with a score of 8.34, with Berlin coming third at 8.04.
And what about Melbourne? We were ranked as the 14th best city in the world for culture lovers, with a decent score of 6.15. Apparently, we’re “artistic and vibrant”, with more than 100 art galleries and museums and 348 ‘historical spots’.
Before you say ‘shoulda been higher’, we’ve got three words for you: Florence and Venice. Out of all 50 cities analysed, the Renaissance city of Florence ranked 36th, while breathtaking Venice came in at number 40. It just feels wrong to us, but we’ve seen the spreadsheet and the numbers don’t lie.
Here are the full rankings of the top 20 cities for culture lovers in 2024:
- Paris
- London
- Berlin
- New York City
- Barcelona
- Madrid
- Los Angeles
- Seoul
- Tokyo
- Munich
- Amsterdam
- Vienna
- Toronto
- Melbourne
- Prague
- Athens
- Montreal
- Washington DC
- Rome
- Buenos Aires
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