You can see it from a distance, on the Ponte Spinola, and it’s the most recognisable thing in Genoa after the Lanterna lighthouse: a stranded ship resting on the water, its rounded hull floating on a series of pillars. This is the Acquario di Genova, inaugurated on 15 October 1992 during the Columbus International Specialised Expo (which had opened to the public on 15 May 1992) (the five-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Americas), designed by Renzo Piano with the advice of the American Peter Chermayeff from Cambridge Seven Associates. At its opening it was the largest aquarium in Europe and the second largest in the world after Osaka. Today it has 70 tanks spread across 12,000 square metres, houses around 15,000 animals of 400 species, is open 365 days a year from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and for decades has been Italy’s most visited tourist attraction, with over a million entries each year.
Where it is
The official address is Area Porto Antico — Ponte Spinola, 16, 16128 Genova. The Ponte Spinola is the first of the historic piers of the Porto Antico (Old Port), the one closest to the old town: on foot it’s five minutes from the Cathedral of San Lorenzo (along Via San Lorenzo and Sottoripa), eight minutes from Piazza De Ferrari (via Via XX Settembre and Via Caricamento), ten minutes from Principe railway station (along Via Buozzi, heading down to the port). The San Giorgio stop on the AMT underground is 200 metres away (green line, 8 stops from Brignole). All the bus lines that go down to the Porto Antico either terminate at or pass through Caricamento, directly in front of the Aquarium.
By car, the Porto Antico area is a Limited Traffic Zone (ZTL) only during certain evening hours; the most convenient car park is the Marina del Porto Antico (700 spaces, entrance from Calata Mandraccio), or Piccapietra and Sotto Sopraelevata (both 8–10 minutes on foot). For those arriving by train it’s particularly handy: Brignole station is 1.5 km away — a twenty-minute walk along Via XX Settembre and Caricamento, or 5 minutes by underground.
The visitors’ entrance is on the seaward side, after crossing the Ponte Spinola. The automated ticket machines are separate from the staffed ticket desks (we recommend buying online to avoid queues at weekends and during the summer months).
The 1992 Columbian Expo and the rebirth of the waterfront
The Aquarium was born as part of the most ambitious urban regeneration project Genoa has known in the twentieth century: the 1992 Specialised Expo — “Christopher Columbus, the Ship and the Sea”, organised for the five-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Americas. For decades the historic port had been cut off from the city by the elevated road, the freight railway lines, and the disused industrial wharves. The Expo financed the conversion of the entire seafront, from the Molo Vecchio all the way to the Lanterna, based on a masterplan by Renzo Piano.
The project combined pre-existing port-archaeology buildings — the Magazzini del Cotone (Cotton Warehouses, early twentieth century), the seventeenth-century Magazzini della Dogana (Customs Warehouses), the Edificio Millo, and Galeazzo Alessi’s Porta Siberia (1553) — with brand-new architecture: the Bigo (a panoramic lift), the Piazza delle Feste, the Isola delle Chiatte, and the Aquarium as the visual focus of the whole seafront. The Biosphere would come later, in 2001.
The idea of the Aquarium sprang from the happy intuition that a great sea-themed container — drawing on the city’s historic identity — could be the magnet that turned the Porto Antico from a mere passage into a genuine tourist destination. That intuition has worked beyond all expectations: in thirty years the Aquarium has brought tens of millions of visitors to the city and pulled along the entire Genoese tourist industry with it.
The building: the stranded ship
Renzo Piano’s project is explicitly metaphorical. The structure has the shape of a great stranded vessel, “a ship ready to sail”, as the architect himself described it: a rounded hull 240 metres long, suspended on reinforced concrete pillars that lift it off the deck of the Ponte Spinola, leaving the space below free for people to circulate. The choice to place it parallel to the quay, rather than perpendicular, avoids cutting off the view from the Porto Antico towards the open sea and keeps the reading of the building as a navigating object rather than as conventional architecture.
The materials are those typical of Piano’s style: exposed concrete, stainless steel for the visible structures, glass for the great transparent surfaces of the cetacean pavilion and the entrance halls. The roofing uses corrugated metal sheets that recall the roofs of port warehouses. The interior lighting is designed to make the colours of the tanks the real protagonists: little ambient light, much light dedicated to the aquariums, guided routes that alternate large panoramic tanks with smaller, almost cinematic, windows.
The technical consultancy for the aquarium side was entrusted to Peter Chermayeff, founder of Cambridge Seven Associates, the Boston firm specialised in urban aquariums that had designed the New England Aquarium in Boston (1969) and the National Aquarium in Baltimore (1981). It is to Chermayeff that we owe the concept of the continuous path (visitors cannot “skip” sections) and the immersive tank typology with underwater views across multiple levels.
The route: 70 tanks, five environments
A standard visit lasts about three hours and forty-five minutes and unfolds across three floors. The route is a single loop, with emergency exits but no shortcuts: the exhibition sequence has been designed as a narrative, from the Ligurian Sea to the tropical seas, with intermediate stops in rainforests, cold seas and freshwater environments.
The most impressive tanks in terms of size are those of the cetaceans (see the dedicated section below), the sharks, the seals, the penguins (the colony produces chicks every year: in March 2026 Magno, Lucy and Pinolo were born, their names chosen through a public vote), the manatees, and the great ray lagoon, where visitors can touch the animals under staff supervision.
Among the more carefully curated displays, worth mentioning are the Great Barrier Reef tank (with over 100 species of tropical fish and living corals kept in culture), the Amazon rainforest glass enclosure with piranhas and freshwater fish, the jellyfish tank lit with ultraviolet light to enhance their transparency, and the polar tank with Humboldt and Magellanic penguins. The “Abysses” section reconstructs the Mediterranean deep-sea environment with species rarely shown to the public, including deep-water eels, giant crabs and bioluminescent fish.
The official number of animals housed exceeds 15,000 specimens from 400 different species — fish, marine mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates — distributed across the main thematic environments: tropical seas, temperate seas, cold seas, tropical forests, fresh waters.
The Cetacean Pavilion (2013)
On 27 July 2013 the Cetacean Pavilion was inaugurated, the most important expansion of the Aquarium since its 1992 opening. This project too is signed by Renzo Piano: a 23-metre-tall structure, most of it submerged in water, 94 metres long, 30 wide, housing four open-air tanks with a total volume of 4,800 cubic metres of water.
The pavilion is physically separate from the main body of the Aquarium but connected through the visit route. The tanks are visible both from above (from the panoramic terrace) and from below, through wide submerged glass walls that allow visitors to watch the bottlenose dolphins moving at full speed. The technical design of the pavilion required complex solutions for managing sea water: continuous biological filtering, temperature control, and acoustic isolation to reduce stress on the animals. It is considered one of the most advanced cetacean facilities in the world from the point of view of animal welfare.
The public enters from the upper terrace: some of the most recognisable photos of the Aquarium — dolphins swimming under the great arch — were taken precisely in the pavilion’s observation tunnel.
The Nave Italia / Biodiversity Pavilion (1998)
The Aquarium’s first expansion, six years after its opening, reused the hull of an actual ship: the Nave Italia (later renamed “Nave Blu”, the Blue Ship), moored alongside the main building and internally converted into exhibition space. Today it houses the Biodiversity Pavilion, with thematic exhibitions on the flora and fauna of the most fragile marine ecosystems (mangroves, endangered coral reefs, plasticised seas). The Aquarium’s temporary exhibitions are also often hosted on the Nave Blu, which has the flexibility of a large open container.
The idea of reusing a cargo ship’s hull to expand the museum was, at the time, a brilliant and low-impact solution: the ship was simply moored, fitted out inside, and connected by a walkway. It’s a solution consistent with the Genoese philosophy of valuing what the port already produces — creative reuse that refuses demolition.
Conservation, research and scientific partnerships
The Aquarium is not just a tourist attraction. It’s managed by Costa Edutainment S.p.A., a Genoese company that also runs the Bigo, the Biosphere, the Galata, Mirabilandia and other venues, but the research and conservation activities are coordinated by the Fondazione Acquario di Genova Onlus, the Cetacean Sanctuary Research, and through partnerships with international institutions such as the EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquaria) and the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).
The Aquarium takes part in European captive breeding programmes for endangered species (sharks, sea turtles, Humboldt penguins), hosts a sea turtle recovery centre in collaboration with the Museum of the Sea, and actively runs awareness campaigns against plastic pollution in the Pelagos Sanctuary (the protected marine area between Liguria, Provence and Sardinia, where sperm whales, fin whales and dolphins regularly pass through).
Research published by the Aquarium’s scientific staff has covered, in recent years, the reproductive biology of manatees, the ethology of captive bottlenose dolphins, microplastics in the sediments of the Ligurian Sea, and the optimisation of diets for tropical species. These activities are an integral part of the declared mission of the institution: to educate, conserve, and research.
Practical information
Hours: open 365 days a year from 9:00 to 20:00 (last entry at 6:00 p.m.). At peak times (weekends, bank holidays, August) the queue at the entrance can exceed 30 minutes — buying the timed online ticket is strongly recommended.
Single tickets (starting from):
- Adult (13+): €26
- Reduced (over-65s, military, people with disabilities): €20
- Child (4–12 years): €16
- Infants 0–3 years: free
Combined tickets (more convenient for those wanting the other Porto Antico attractions too):
- Planet Aquarium (Aquarium + Biosphere + Bigo): from €37 adult
- Aquarium + Children’s City: from €40 adult
- Aquarium Village (all 4 Porto Antico attractions): from €49 adult
Contacts: telephone +39 010 23451, official website acquariodigenova.it. The facility is fully accessible to visitors with reduced mobility (ramps, lifts, barrier-free route).
What’s nearby
The Aquarium is the heart of the Porto Antico, and everything surrounding it is worth a visit. Just a few steps away: the Bigo (panoramic lift) and the Biosphere by Renzo Piano; the Galata Museum of the Sea (a 10-minute walk along Calata de Mari) with the Nazario Sauro submarine open to visitors; the Isola delle Chiatte with its winter ice rink; the Magazzini del Cotone with a multiplex cinema, bowling and conference centre.
Heading up towards the old town, in five minutes you reach the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, with its Treasury and Holy Chalice. 800 metres to the west stands the Lanterna, the historic lighthouse and symbol of the city. For lunch or dinner within a 10-minute walk: I Tre Merli in the Magazzini del Cotone, Il Marin, the Michelin-starred restaurant at Eataly, Antica Sciamadda in Via San Giorgio, and Sa Pesta in Via Giustiniani.
For a full family day at the Porto Antico, the combined Aquarium + Bigo + Biosphere + Children’s City (at Ponte Embriaco) takes seven to eight hours, lunch included in the area, and is probably the most complete family-friendly experience Genoa can offer.
