Description
The Galata Museo del Mare is Genoa's great maritime museum, in the Darsena of the old port: a full-size Genoese galley, a brigantine, a storm off Cape Horn to face at the helm and a real submarine moored in front of the museum.
It is the largest maritime museum in the Mediterranean, opened in 2004 in a building of the old arsenal, where the Republic built its galleys. The name comes from Galata, the Istanbul district that was a wealthy Genoese colony.
On the ground floor is the galley, reconstructed on the arsenal's slipway, with rooms on Andrea Doria, on the Republic's weapons and on Christopher Columbus, some of whose handwritten documents the museum holds. On the first floor you climb onto the galley's deck and leaf through old atlases and globes.
The second floor is devoted to sailing: there is the brigantine Anna, and in the room of storms and shipwrecks you can try rounding Cape Horn in a simulated gale.
At the top, the Mirador terrace offers an unusual viewpoint over the city and the port. In front of the museum, since 2009, lies the submarine Nazario Sauro, launched in 1976: you can visit the crew quarters, the control room, the mess and the galley.
One of the most moving objects is a life raft. In 1978, off the Falklands, Ambrogio Fogar's boat sank, perhaps struck by an orca or a rogue wave: he and his companion Mauro Mancini were left adrift on that raft.
They were rescued after 74 days, but Mancini did not survive. In 2010 the Fogar family donated the raft to the museum.
The third floor tells instead the story of Italian emigration to the Americas: the journey from the alleys of Genoa to the Stazione Marittima, life aboard the steamship, and arrival at Ellis Island, in La Boca or on the fazendas of Brazil. This is also where you find the shipowners' room, devoted to the leading figures of the port.
It is the largest maritime museum in the Mediterranean, opened in 2004 in a building of the old arsenal, where the Republic built its galleys. The name comes from Galata, the Istanbul district that was a wealthy Genoese colony.
On the ground floor is the galley, reconstructed on the arsenal's slipway, with rooms on Andrea Doria, on the Republic's weapons and on Christopher Columbus, some of whose handwritten documents the museum holds. On the first floor you climb onto the galley's deck and leaf through old atlases and globes.
The second floor is devoted to sailing: there is the brigantine Anna, and in the room of storms and shipwrecks you can try rounding Cape Horn in a simulated gale.
At the top, the Mirador terrace offers an unusual viewpoint over the city and the port. In front of the museum, since 2009, lies the submarine Nazario Sauro, launched in 1976: you can visit the crew quarters, the control room, the mess and the galley.
One of the most moving objects is a life raft. In 1978, off the Falklands, Ambrogio Fogar's boat sank, perhaps struck by an orca or a rogue wave: he and his companion Mauro Mancini were left adrift on that raft.
They were rescued after 74 days, but Mancini did not survive. In 2010 the Fogar family donated the raft to the museum.
The third floor tells instead the story of Italian emigration to the Americas: the journey from the alleys of Genoa to the Stazione Marittima, life aboard the steamship, and arrival at Ellis Island, in La Boca or on the fazendas of Brazil. This is also where you find the shipowners' room, devoted to the leading figures of the port.