(AGI) Rho (Milan), Oct 31 - The target of 20 million visitorsforecast at the beginning of Expo Milano 2015 and used by manyas a yardstick of its success has been reached. In fact, thetarget had already been exceeded one week before the close ofthe event, which was set for Saturday, Oct. 31, after 184 daysof operation. At the close, Giuseppe Sala, the SoleCommissioner of the Milan Expo, estimated a total attendance ofover 21 million people. According to the figures circulated onSunday, Oct. 25, the month with the highest attendance wasSeptember, with roughly 4 million visitors, although the numbermight even turn out to be even higher for October seeing that3.6 million admission tickets had been sold by last Sunday. Theboom of admissions persisted through August, which recorded3.367 million visitors, the month with the third-highestattendance, roughly matching the approximately 3.4 millionvisitors in June. Lagging behind are May, with 2.7 million, andJuly, with 2.8 million. Attendance was probably lower in Julybecause of the scorching hot temperatures. The day thatrecorded maximum attendance was Saturday, Oct. 10, with 272,785visitors. In addition to ordinary visitors, the event was alsoattended by numerous testimonials and celebrities, includingBono of U2 and Sharon Stone, and many dignitaries, including 60heads of State and government like German Chancellor AngelaMerkel and Valdimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande,the Prime Ministers of Spain and Great Britain, Mariano Rajoyand David Cameron, and the First Lady of the United States,Michelle Obama. Each of them visited the pavilion of their ownCountry and some of the 145 national pavilions present at theExpo, in addition to the pavilions of three internationalorganisations, the United Nations, the European Union and theCERN, and the 'clusters' grouping together several countriesaround a single product. The exhibition area covered a surfaceof over one million square metres, divided into 84 micro-areasunder the management of a 'district' chief. In order to get thewhole show rolling for six months, the number of night-shiftworkers in maintenance, security, restaurant deliveries andwaste collection totalled 7,000 while 930 trucks circulated inthe area every night. A total of 500 security cameras wereinstalled around the external perimeter of the exhibition areaand 2,000 inside it. Security operations at the Expo andsurrounding streets were assured by over 2,300 military troopswho checked a total of 45,234 vehicles, arrested 10 people andfiled police reports on 100 more. The Milan Prefecture assignedthe Army the task of patrolling the city and sensitivelocations and of checking the delivery trucks that entered thegrounds after closing hour at 11 p.m. The patrol operationsdeployed 450 vehicles which were subdivided into three taskforces. .