Half a million visitors at Centre Céramique in 2023
In 2023, Centre Céramique in Maastricht welcomed over half a million visitors and participants in 2023. This number was published in the organisation’s annual report that was released today. With the largest audience reach in Maastricht, the cultural institution managed to grow from an average of 400,000 to 500,000 visitors and active participants in 2023.
Centre Céramique is an organisational unit of the Municipality of Maastricht. The Maastricht City Library (with two library service points in Heer and Malpertuis, 11 school libraries and a home delivery service), Cultuurmakers Maastricht, Kaleidoscoop, Maastricht Museum and Natuurhistorisch Museum (Natural History Museum) Maastricht all fall under this organisational unit. All of this may be found in three locations: Centre Céramique (Avenue Céramique), Kumulus (Herbenusstraat) and Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht (De Bosquetplein).
Increase in visitor numbers
Centre Céramique attributes the main reason for the high number of visitors to the redesign of the Centre Céramique location, including the addition of Werkcentrum Zuid-Limburg as well as Coffeelovers in the main lobby that serves as an accessible meeting place. Opening its doors in April 2023, the Maastricht Museum on the first floor and the first temporary exhibition ‘Maastricht 1673 - The Sun King Conquers the City’ have also made substantial contributions to the increased visitor numbers.
The new social role of the Maastricht Library and Cultuurmakers Maastricht’s efforts to foster cultural participation in the city and in the neighbourhoods also helped make a rise in visitor and participant numbers possible.
When it comes to theatre, the visual arts and dance, the Kumulus building was simply buzzing with activity. The theatre and lobby are used for events organised by the Theater aan het Vrijthof and Jazz Maastricht, amongst others. Meeting rooms at this location were also hired more frequently.
Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht drew 33,000 visitors, remaining stable. A modernisation project for the museum is in the works for 2024, and people are hard at work on the master plan for this.
Crowd-pullers in 2024
In 2024, Centre Céramique hopes to match the 2023 visitor numbers with several major crowd-pullers. From 18 June to 4 August, a 67-million-year-old triceratops from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center’s herd will be on display at Centre Céramique. We are celebrating 175 years of the Maastrichtian age with two conferences and the Mosasaurus Experience: a fifteen-meter-long 3D-printed Mosasaurus. ‘Meet Bèr - Mosasaurus Experience’ will beon display at Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht from18 August.
New sections have been added to the Maastricht Museum covering the period 1000 - 1800, World War I, World War II, and the Maastricht Treaty, and the exhibition wing with the ‘The Sound of Maastricht’ exposition is open. We are also working on a major exhibition involving the Heiligdomsvaart (pilgrimage) that will be held in 2025.
For further information and the 2023 annual report, visit: www.centreceramique.nl/org
