Free venues

National Museum of Wales, Cardiff Museum of Welsh Life, St Fagans Roman museum, Caerleon Turner House Gallery, Penarth Big Pit, Blaenavon Welsh Slate Museum, Llanberis National Waterfront Museum

And the policy has broadened the social profile of museum-goers, taking in groups usually not keen on cultural pursuits.

The Welsh Assembly Government unveiled its free entry programme to the venues ahead of Westminster's scheme for English museums.

Since the entry fees were scrapped, for example:

• Welsh Slate Museum at Llanberis has had 160% more visitors
• Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagan's near Cardiff reported a 100% increase

Key public breaks and school holidays have been some of the make-or-break occasions which contributed to the rise.

Both sites will be finalists at the Wales Tourist Board's prestigious Wales Tourism Awards ceremony on 11 April.

Museum bosses now expect to have logged 1.4m visitors by the end of the calendar year; that will be up from 736,000 in 2001.

Jenny Randerson's policy has drawn more visitors

"The news that visitor numbers at each of the main NMGW sites continue to rise is very encouraging," Jenny Randerson said.

"Free admission has brought in many thousands of new visitors to Wales who perhaps would not otherwise have come to the Museum's sites.

"Parents, grandparents and children from all social backgrounds have all developed the habit of visiting National Museum sites throughout Wales to appreciate, enjoy and learn from our national treasures."

She added the policy has helped put Wales on the map, and May's Museums and Galleries Month would generate still more revenue. It meant free access to:

Visitors success

The figures appear to show Ms Randerson has made good on the assembly's social inclusion promise to draw more people to the arts.

That could be key to Cardiff's all-Wales bid to become 2008's European Capital of Culture and to justifying the �100m Wales Millennium Centre multi-purpose arts house planned for 2004.

The National Museum of Wales

The National Museums and Galleries of Wales organisation is now embarking on redevelopments to improve more visitor facilities at Big the Big Pit industrial heritage museum in Blaenavon and the Museum of the Welsh Woollen Industry at Dre-fach Felindre near Llandysul.

The new National Waterfront Museum is still under development at Swansea's marina area.

This Easter, Welsh tourism appears to have had a fillip with a sunny weekend daring to lift operators out of the doldrums of foot-and-mouth and 11 September.

Ms Randerson's museums policy came as welcome relief to the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, which was forced to close six venues at the height of the agriculture crisis.

But the announcement was met with concern by private operators complaining it could be the nail in their coffin.

They feared they would not be able to compete with the publicly-funded organisations.