Description
The Aquarium of Genoa is the largest aquarium in Italy: more than 1.2 million visitors a year come to the Porto Antico to see sharks, dolphins, penguins and manatees in tanks that recreate the seas and fresh waters of the world.
Renzo Piano designed it for Expo 1992, which celebrated five hundred years since Columbus's voyage. Inside live about ten thousand animals of more than four hundred species, along a route covering some 12,000 square metres.
The route runs through three pavilions. The main one holds the Shark Bay, the Moray Eel Grotto, the tanks of seals, penguins and manatees, the jellyfish and a few reptiles, from caimans to iguanas. You can watch the largest tanks from several levels.
The Cetacean Pavilion, opened in 2013 and also designed by Piano, houses the dolphins in four large open-air pools. You watch them from above, through a glass wall, and from below, from an underwater half-tunnel.
The third pavilion is a real ship about a hundred metres long, added in 1998 and linked to the building by a footbridge. Inside, the touch tank lets you stroke the rays; a little further on are the Tropical Lagoon, a coral reef, and amphibians and reptiles from the rainforests.
Halfway round you step out onto the ship's deck, an open-air terrace over the harbour. To see everything at a relaxed pace you need about two and a half hours, and for children the Aquarium also runs behind-the-scenes tours.
Some say Piano's building looks like a ship about to set sail. The first exhibition set out to tell the story of two encounters: the one between the Old and New Worlds in 1492, and the new environmental awareness of 1992.
The dolphin pavilion is 23 metres high, like a seven-storey building, but almost all of it is under water. Its four pools hold 4,800 cubic metres of water between them.
That water comes from the open sea: it is drawn about 500 metres off the coast at a depth of 50 metres. The pipes cross the harbour and get past the breakwater through a natural cleft in the rock.
The Aquarium is more than an exhibition. Since 2009 it has been the official rescue centre for loggerhead sea turtles in trouble, and since the 1990s it has worked to save the European pond turtle.
Don't miss
• Shark Bay.
• Cetacean Pavilion.
• Ray touch tank.
• The terrace on the ship's deck.
Did you know?
• Once a month, kids can spend the night sleeping in front of the shark tank.
• Inaugurated for Expo 1992, the Aquarium only opened to the public permanently in 1993.
Renzo Piano designed it for Expo 1992, which celebrated five hundred years since Columbus's voyage. Inside live about ten thousand animals of more than four hundred species, along a route covering some 12,000 square metres.
The route runs through three pavilions. The main one holds the Shark Bay, the Moray Eel Grotto, the tanks of seals, penguins and manatees, the jellyfish and a few reptiles, from caimans to iguanas. You can watch the largest tanks from several levels.
The Cetacean Pavilion, opened in 2013 and also designed by Piano, houses the dolphins in four large open-air pools. You watch them from above, through a glass wall, and from below, from an underwater half-tunnel.
The third pavilion is a real ship about a hundred metres long, added in 1998 and linked to the building by a footbridge. Inside, the touch tank lets you stroke the rays; a little further on are the Tropical Lagoon, a coral reef, and amphibians and reptiles from the rainforests.
Halfway round you step out onto the ship's deck, an open-air terrace over the harbour. To see everything at a relaxed pace you need about two and a half hours, and for children the Aquarium also runs behind-the-scenes tours.
Some say Piano's building looks like a ship about to set sail. The first exhibition set out to tell the story of two encounters: the one between the Old and New Worlds in 1492, and the new environmental awareness of 1992.
The dolphin pavilion is 23 metres high, like a seven-storey building, but almost all of it is under water. Its four pools hold 4,800 cubic metres of water between them.
That water comes from the open sea: it is drawn about 500 metres off the coast at a depth of 50 metres. The pipes cross the harbour and get past the breakwater through a natural cleft in the rock.
The Aquarium is more than an exhibition. Since 2009 it has been the official rescue centre for loggerhead sea turtles in trouble, and since the 1990s it has worked to save the European pond turtle.
Don't miss
• Shark Bay.
• Cetacean Pavilion.
• Ray touch tank.
• The terrace on the ship's deck.
Did you know?
• Once a month, kids can spend the night sleeping in front of the shark tank.
• Inaugurated for Expo 1992, the Aquarium only opened to the public permanently in 1993.