A British travel agency has announced its top 10 culture capitals of the world. Based on visitor reviews and sources such as Time Out, Titan Travel scored 60 world cities for culture factors. Florence came second behind Spain’s Granada.
The results for the Titan Travel culture capitals of the world list are rather surprising, with Charleston in the USA taking a few category top spots, along with Kyoto in Japan. Overall, Spain’s Granada came out in top spot, narrowly pipping Florence into second place.
The methodology is described the agency as: “We began by taking a seed list of 60 of the most cultured cities in the world, using sources like The Culture Trip and Time Out. You can view the full list of sources used here. Using World Population Review data, we gathered the population for every destination.We used TripAdvisor for all our cultural factors. We collected every destination’s score for every factor and normalised them against each other to achieve a final score out of 10.“
This is how Italian cities fared in the top 10 of the different categories.
Culture Capital with most things to do
Cusco in Peru took top spot with 579.72 points ahead of Charleston (547.57), Miami (417.97) and Marrakesh (374.30). Florence was sixth was 332.52, whilst Rome did not feature in the top 10.
The best five star restaurants
Kyoto topped the list, ahead of Granada and Miama. For a country renowned for its cuisine and wonderful ingredients, not a single Italian city made it into the top 10. One wonders if this is because of the many tourist trap restaurants which can be found in places like Rome, Florence and Venice.
Culture Capital with most sights and landmarks
With Italian cities like Florence and Rome positively busting at the seams with monuments, it’s surprising they did so poorly in this category. After all, it’s hard not to stumble upon an ancient Roman monument or Baroque sculpture when walking around Rome.
Florence placed fourth with a score of 64.70 behind Kyoto (1st with 110.03), Granada (2nd) and San Francisco (3rd). Rome came in tenth place with just 38.60.
Most art galleries
Charleston came top with 28.75 galleries per 100,000 people, with Florence – home to the world-famous Uffizi – taking tenth place with a score of 5.49. Apparently, Charleston has a thriving art scene with a the unofficial ‘gallery district’ sprouting new galleries all the time.
Culture Capital with most museums
Again Charleston bagged top spot, with a score of 47.05 museums per 100,000 people. Florence came in third with 22.65. Rome did not even feature in the top 10.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is because Rome is essentially an open-air museum, and so will not have scored highly when it comes to museum buildings. I do see this as a flaw in the calculations of Titan Travel.
Best for wine tours and tastings – Florence
Florence was streets ahead of the competition when it came to wine tours and tastings scoring 60.06 per 100,000 people, with San Francisco (who would have guessed?) in second place with 12.85 points. Rome was Italy’s other entry in fourth place.
Culture Capital with most literary, art & music tours
Once again, Florence topped the list with a score of 57.95 compared to second placed Rome with 12.95. Surprisingly, cities such as Paris and Vienna scored under 3.0 in this category.
The Overall Ranking
Having scored the 60 cultural cities for each of the above factors, the scores were then normalised to give a figure out of 10.
Granada came in first place with 9.27, with Florence squeezed into second place with 9.25. Florence was the only Italian city to make it into the top 10. A surprise, but the Cradle of the Renaissance has done Italy proud.
