VisitScotland has announced that more than 45 million people visited Scottish attractions in 2006, with Edinburgh Castle and Kelvingrove Art Gallery topping the list.

According to the latest annual Scottish Visitor Attraction Monitor, the top free attractions were Kelvingrove with 1.88 million visitors, followed by the National Gallery of Scotland complex and the National Museum of Scotland.

The most popular paid attractions were Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh Zoo and Edinburgh Bus Tours.

Across the whole of Scotland there was an annual 6 per cent rise – to 45.3 million – in the number of visits to attractions.

Other attractions which performed well include the Falkirk Wheel (46 per cent rise), Glasgow’s Museum of Transport experienced (34.6 per cent) and Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian (48.2 per cent), bringing the Chapel into the top 20 Scottish visitor attractions for the first time.

VisitScotland’s chief executive Philip Riddle said: “Scotland’s wide range of visitor attractions are a crucial part of our tourism industry. Whether it is castles, museums, art galleries or monuments – they all play an important role in helping the industry reach its ambition of growing revenues from tourism by 50 per cent by 2015.

Independent research body, the Moffat Centre, compiled the monitor.