ONE million visitors have stepped inside the Museum of Liverpool since it opened just nine months ago.

The £72m attraction has outstripped its management’s expectations, who forecast it would attract 750,000 people in its first year.

Its director, Janet Dugdale, was joined by National Museums Liverpool director David Fleming and pupils from Bishop Martin School, in Woolton, yesterday to celebrate the milestone with a football-themed photograph.

She said: “One million people is hard to picture, but to put it into perspective that’s 90,000 Liverpool and Chelsea fans going to Wembley for 11 FA Cup Finals.

“We could fill Anfield 22 times and Goodison Park 25 times with the number of people we’ve had through our doors and that’s a massive achievement.”

The largest newly-built national museum in Britain for more than a century, the Museum of Liverpool was opened by six-year-old Finn O’Hare on July 19 last year. Its opening week remains its busiest – attracting 77,667 people.

Nearly 60,000 people visited during the two-week Easter period last month, while the Sea Odyssey giant spectacular led over 22,000 people to the museum throughout the weekend of April 21-22.

Reactions to the attraction have not all been positive, however.

Architecture critic Rowan Moore dubbed it “a God awful mess” and “a restless squiggle”, while questioning the suitability of constructing such a design on a Unesco World Heritage Site.

It was also nominated for the annual Carbuncle Cup, voted by readers of Building Design magazine for the most loathed new building in Britain.

The building is also the subject of an ongoing legal dispute between National Museums Liverpool and architects and lead consultants AEW.

However, the museum has been shortlisted for four Museum Heritage Awards.