Florence tourism surges 21% as non-Christian visitors double, Opera del Duomo Museum ranks second

Florence tourism grew 21% from 2010 to 2015, reaching 2.637 million arrivals, according to data presented by Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore president Franco Lucchesi and Sociometrica's Antonio Preiti. Museum visits increased over 20% in the same period. Non-Christian tourists surged 77% from 384,000 to 682,000, with South Korea overtaking Japan: Korean visitors rose 390% while Japanese dropped 12.9%. Chinese tourism grew 300%, India 210%, Turkey 155%. The Grande Museo dell'Opera del Duomo attracted 1.373 million visitors in 2015, second only to the Uffizi (1.554 million, later 2.01 million in 2016), and ahead of the Accademia (1.129 million). Sociometrica and Expert Systems used COGITO semantic technology to analyze 14,667 English-language social media and TripAdvisor posts from October 2016 to January 2017. The sentiment ranking placed the Museo del Duomo first with a score above 90/100, followed by the Baptistery, Accademia, and Duomo's Cupola; the Uffizi ranked tenth with 83/100 due to crowding complaints. Frequent positive terms included 'worth', 'great', 'beautiful', 'amazing', 'unique'. Preiti noted the museum's beauty links to depth of experience. The research suggests adapting communication for non-Christian visitors to explain Italian art's sacred themes.