Five national heritage sites have received top marks from international travel guide TripAdvisor.

Heritage Malta yesterday announced that the Malta Maritime Museum, Fort St Angelo, the National War Museum, the Roman Villa, and St Paul’s Catacombs have all been recipients of the highly coveted TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence.

This means that these five Heritage Malta sites have constantly featured as top attractions by those who visited them.

The prestigious ranking is only given to sites that consistently achieve outstanding traveller reviews on the user-generated travel website.

An American website, TripAdvisor claims to be the world’s largest travel guide with more than 315 million members and over 500 million reviews and opinions of hotels, restaurants, attractions and other travel-related establishments.

Heritage Malta said it was satisfied to say that the sites had all received top marks for the last five consecutive years – a testament to the cultural agency’s efforts to maintain these heritage sites and the ongoing curation efforts.

There are hundreds of winners of the Certificate of Excellence all over the world.

These represent the upper echelon of businesses listed on the website, with only the top 10 per cent receiving the prestigious award.

The Travellers’ Choice awards are the highest honour TripAdvisor can bestow and are based on millions of reviews and opinions from travellers around the world.

To qualify for the Certificate of Excellence, businesses must maintain an overall rating of four or higher, out of a possible five, as reviewed by travellers on TripAdvisor.

Additional criteria include the volume of reviews received within the last 12 months of the year in question.