Record year for Brussels’ Atomium and Comic Strip Museum

More than 628,000 people visited the Atomium in 2014, the third best year for the landmark since it opened during the World Expo in 1958, reports brusselnieuws.be. The Comic Strip Museum also just closed out a record year, welcoming more than 200,000 visitors in 2014.

Two-thirds of the visitors to the Atomium in 2014 were foreign tourists, while one-third were Belgians. The Atomium’s Yvonne Boodts cited several reasons for the good year: "There are schools that visit us faithfully every year,” he told brusselnieuws.be. “Also, there was good weather. And we welcomed a lot of French visitors, thanks to our marketing efforts there.”

Brussels’ Comic Strip Museum also reaped the benefits of a good reputation abroad, as reflected in the visitor statistics: the French made up the largest group of visitors (43.3%), followed by Spaniards (4.5%), Italians (4.4%) and Chinese (3.6%). The museum welcomed 216,217 visitors in 2014, an increase of 9% over 2013.