At the far end of the Darsena, where the ships of the Republic were once built, stands the Galata Museum of the Sea: 12,000 square metres across five floors and 31 rooms, the largest maritime museum in the Mediterranean. Opened in 2004 after the intervention of Spanish architect Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra on the historic Galata building (1590), it houses a full-scale reconstruction of a seventeenth-century galleon, sections on navigation, trade, emigration, and since 2010 displays in front, moored in the Darsena, the submarine Nazario Sauro S 518 — the only Italian submarine that can be visited in the water. Since 2022 it also hosts the MEI National Museum of Italian Emigration, refitted in 2024. Open daily from 10:00 to 19:00.
Where it is
The address is Calata de Mari 1, 16126 Genova, at the western end of the Darsena (Old Port basin), ten minutes on foot from the Aquarium along the waterfront towards the Lanterna. The Galata is unmistakable: a long historic pink-stone building with a pitched roof, framed by a glass-and-steel sail by Vázquez Consuegra marking its entrance and the contemporary modernist volume.
On foot: ten minutes from the Porto Antico / Aquarium, twelve minutes from Principe station heading down Via Andrea Doria, fifteen minutes from the Cathedral of San Lorenzo via Sottoripa. The Darsena stop on the AMT underground is 100 metres from the entrance (green line). All the buses heading to Sampierdarena or the Lanterna (lines 1, 7, 18) stop in Via Gramsci, two minutes away.
By car, the most convenient car park is Piazza Principe (200 metres) or the Marina del Porto Antico (700 metres). The zone has evening ZTL restrictions, but for daytime visits there are no limits.
The historic building — the Galata — is one of the few shipyards of the Republic that have survived to our day. Its name comes from the homonymous district of Constantinople (today’s Karaköy in Istanbul), where the Genoese Republic had a powerful colony: the Galatas were the districts of the Genoese colonies in the eastern Mediterranean, and this shipyard has borne that name since the sixteenth century.
The project: from shipyard to museum
The idea of a great maritime museum in Genoa took shape in the Nineties, after the success of the Aquarium, when the city was trying to build a network of cultural attractions consistent with its identity as a port. The choice fell on the abandoned Galata building, and the restoration-plus-extension project was entrusted to the Sevillian architect Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra (born 1947), author of major public works in Spain and Portugal.
Vázquez Consuegra’s intervention, completed in 2004, is an exemplary case of dialectical restoration: the ancient stone building is fully preserved and consolidated, while the contemporary extension — the great glass-and-steel sail facing the Darsena — unmistakably marks its new public use. The two architectures coexist without imitating each other: the old doesn’t pretend to be new, and the new doesn’t pretend to be old.
The museum is managed by the Mu.MA Institution — Musei del Mare e delle Migrazioni, which also coordinates the Commenda di San Giovanni di Prè, the Naval Museum of Pegli, and other Genoese maritime-themed museums. The scientific direction has followed an innovative narrative approach: each room tells a story, with multimedia installations, full-scale reconstructions, original objects and immersive set designs that transcend the idea of the nineteenth-century display-case museum.
The route: five floors, thirty-one rooms
The visit starts on the ground floor, dedicated to Genoa’s earliest maritime history: historical cartographies, a fifteenth-century portolano (port book), the instruments of navigation (astrolabes, sextants, compasses), models of galleys. From here you climb to the first floor where the most spectacular piece is displayed: the full-scale reconstruction of a seventeenth-century galley, over 50 metres long, which visitors can board, walking the deck, descending to the rowers’ chamber, and observing the officers’ quarters. The galley is the artefact that alone justifies the visit: it is one of very few examples in the world of a Mediterranean warship reconstructed with historical techniques and real dimensions.
The second floor is dedicated to the age of sailing cargo ships (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries), with the reconstruction of a brig’s cabin at visitor eye level, models of clippers and frigates, and the storm installation with audiovisual effects that simulate a stormy crossing. The third floor covers the evolution of steamships, the opening of the Suez Canal, the age of transatlantic liners and the experience of Italian migrants en route to the Americas.
The fourth floor is entirely occupied by the MEI — National Museum of Italian Emigration, inaugurated in 2022 and refitted in 2024, where the epic of 27 million Italian departures between 1861 and 1985 is told through contemporary language (video installations, interactive stations, digital archive). The fifth floor houses the “Coeli sul Mare” panoramic terrace, from which you can take in the whole port — from the Lanterna to the Porto Antico, all the way to the eastern side of the city.
The Nazario Sauro S 518 submarine
In front of the museum, moored in the Darsena, the Nazario Sauro S 518 submarine can be visited: the only Italian submarine visitable in the water, and one of only three submarines on display in Italy (the others are the Enrico Toti in Milan and the Enrico Dandolo in Venice, both on land).
The vessel was built by Fincantieri at the Monfalcone shipyard, launched on 9 October 1976 and delivered to the Italian Navy in 1980. With diesel-electric propulsion, 63.9 metres long, capable of diving to over 250 metres, it served for twenty-two years in Italian submarine fleet missions, mainly in the Mediterranean. Decommissioned in 2002, it was donated to the Mu.MA Institution in 2010 to become a permanent part of the Galata.
On 18 September 2009 the Nazario Sauro left the La Spezia naval arsenal on its final mission, and on 26 September reached the Darsena of Genoa, where it was moored in front of the Galata. Preparing the interior for visits took eight months: safety lighting, protected walkways, signage were installed, and the operational areas (galley, crew quarters, engine room, torpedo room, command bridge) were conservatively restored, leaving everything else exactly as it was in 2002.
The submarine opened to the public on 29 May 2010. The visit lasts about 30-40 minutes and is a unique immersive experience: the spaces are extremely tight, the corridors force single-file walking, the sailors’ berths are stacked three levels high, the torpedo room still holds the inert torpedoes from the operational era. It is strongly discouraged for visitors with claustrophobia. Admission to the submarine requires a supplement to the Galata ticket — combined tickets available at the desk.
The vessel is named after Lieutenant Nazario Sauro (Capodistria 1880 — Pola 1916), an Italian irredentist patriot and gold medal for military valour, hanged by the Austrians during the First World War as a “traitor” because he was of Habsburg nationality but had enlisted in the Italian Navy. He is an emblematic figure of the Julian-Venetian irredentism, and Italian Sauro-class submarines have carried his name forward.
The MEI — Museum of Italian Emigration
The MEI is one of the museum’s most recent great acquisitions: opened in 2022 and fully refitted in 2024, it is Italy’s first national museum dedicated to Italian emigration. The choice of Genoa is no accident: from the city’s port, between 1861 and 1980, over 15 million emigrants departed, headed mainly to the Americas (Argentina, Brazil, United States, Uruguay), then to Australia and central Europe. The Commenda di San Giovanni di Prè, the historic seat of the MEI before its transfer to the Galata, was the reception and quarantine point for those departing.
The route begins with a large immersive room about “the decision to leave” (rural poverty after the Unification, agricultural crises, the call of relatives who had already emigrated), passes through the reconstruction of a transatlantic steerage class and the Ellis Island office, with original video interviews, all the way to contemporary stories of the new Italian emigrants of the 2000–2020 diaspora (the so-called “brain drain”, qualified workers in Germany and Switzerland, young people in Australia and Canada).
The digital archive allows visitors to search for emigrant ancestors by surname and place of departure: a feature that attracts thousands of descendants of Italian-Americans and Italo-Argentines each year in search of their roots.
The Neptune Galleon and Polanski’s ghost ship
In front of the Galata, moored near the Nazario Sauro, is the Neptune Galleon: a faithful ship replica built in 1985-86 in Tunis under the direction of production designer Pierre Guffroy for the film Pirates by Roman Polanski (1986). The ship is armed with 50 real cannons (recast for the film), is 50 metres long and 35 tall, and after the shoot was donated to the City of Genoa as a symbol of the maritime tradition.
The Neptune can be visited with a separate ticket (in some periods it is freely accessible during events). Going on board allows you to touch rigging, masts, yards and quarterdeck at real scale. It is the only seventeenth-century replica ship navigable in Italy.
Practical information
Hours: every day from 10:00 to 19:00 (last entry at 6:00 p.m.). Open 365 days a year except 25 December.
Tickets (from):
- Adult: €17
- Reduced (4-12 years, over-65s, students): €12
- Nazario Sauro submarine: €10 supplement on the Galata ticket
- Combined Galata + Sauro: €22 adult / €15 reduced
- Aquarium Village (Aquarium + Galata + Bigo + Biosphere): from €49
Prices are starting figures and vary by season and online booking (recommended to avoid queues in high season and at weekends).
Contacts: telephone +39 010 2533555, email [email protected], official website galatamuseodelmare.it. The building is accessible to visitors with reduced mobility (lifts to all floors). Visiting the submarine is not recommended for those with significant mobility difficulties or claustrophobia.
What’s nearby
The Galata sits at the heart of the city waterfront, within walking distance of almost all the other Porto Antico attractions: ten minutes for the Aquarium, eight for the Bigo and Biosphere, twelve minutes westwards for the Lanterna (on foot along the Belvedere Luigi Montaldo). Heading up towards the old town, in fifteen minutes you reach the Cathedral of San Lorenzo and the Sottoripa quarter with its historic sciamadde (Antica Friggitoria Carega, Antica Sciamadda).
For lunch or dinner near the Galata: I Tre Merli in the Magazzini del Cotone, the starred Il Marin at Eataly’s Edificio Millo, Sa Pesta on Via Giustiniani for savoury vegetable pies. The nearby Prè district, the historic zone of customs warehouses, still preserves much of its sixteenth- and seventeenth-century urban fabric, and it’s interesting to explore on foot through its caruggi (with usual caution, especially in the evening). The Commenda di San Giovanni di Prè — an ancient hostel for pilgrims bound for the Holy Land, and the first site of the MEI — is still visitable and worth a stop.
