Tate Modern’s Damien Hirst exhibition smashed records to become the most popular solo show in the gallery’s history.

The exhibition, which ran from April to early September and featured the artist’s diamond-encrusted human skull For the Love of God, attracted 463,087 visitors.

Tate Modern said it was the most visited solo exhibition ever held at the gallery, which opened in 2000.

The most visited exhibition in the museum’s history was Matisse Picasso in 2002, which had 467,166 visitors.

Highlights of Hirst’s show, seen by almost 3,000 visitors each day, included A Thousand Years 1990 – where flies emerge from maggots, eat from a rotting cow’s head and die – and The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, in which a shark is suspended in formaldehyde.

Tate Modern director Chris Dercon said: “We are delighted that so many people came to see and discuss the Damien Hirst exhibition at Tate Modern.

“It was wonderful to see such iconic works brought together in one place and to offer our visitors a chance to experience them first-hand.”