GLASGOW'S Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and Paisley Museum are among the top visitor attractions in Scotland.

The Jack Vettriano retrospective at Kelvin-grove was its most success-ful special exhibition ever, attracting more than 123,000 visitors.

Meanwhile, the Lego Brick City exhibition at Paisley Museum was so successful it was extended by two weeks to meet demand.

It helped boost visitor figures for the Renfrew-shire attraction by almost 70% for the year.

More than 32 million visits were made to attractions in Scotland last year, new figures have revealed.

The Association of Scottish Visitor Attract-ions (ASVA) said the statistics showed a rise of more than 225,000 (0.6%) on numbers in 2012.

More than 250 of the organisation's member sites were analysed as part of The 2013 Visitor Trends Report.

Sectors which fared well include heritage prop-erties, sports and activity venues, and distilleries.

David O'Neill, chairman of ASVA said: "We are confident that 2014 will be a bumper year for the visitor attractions sector."

Inveraray Castle and Jail collectively saw a rise of 13%, which experts attributed to the "Down-ton Abbey effect", with the castle featuring in the popular drama.

Edinburgh continued to dominate the marketplace, with 11 of the top 20 attractions in the city.

For the third year, the National Museum of Scotland was the most visited attraction with 1,768,090 visits. Edinburgh Castle was the highest paid entry attraction with 1,420,027 visits.

rebecca.gray@eveningtimes.co.uk