Genoa · Porto Antico · Ponte Spinola
Aquarium of Genoa: tickets, hours and what to see
Dolphins, sharks, penguins and manatees along one route. Here is how to choose your ticket, when to go and how to arrive.
Today
Opening hours for every month are on the Opening hours page.
Checked against the official website on 31 October 2026 · Official source
In short
- Book a day and a time slot in advance: it is the way to be sure of getting in. The visit takes about 2 hours 30 minutes and there is no time limit, so you can stay as long as you like.
- The Aquarium is open every day. On most days it opens at 9:00 and closes at 20:00, with last entry at 18:00. On weekdays from November to February it opens at 10:00 and closes at 19:30, with last entry at 17:30.
- You follow a single route, marked with blue signs, and it is the same for everybody. The building has no architectural barriers. A ticket is valid for one entry only: if you go out, you cannot go back in.
- Short on time? Choose the reserved entry. Want a bigger day? Add the Galata Maritime Museum and its submarine, or the City of Children if you travel with kids.
Shark Bay: a big tank of predators and two sawfish
You enter through a holographic gateway into a large tank of predators. Among them there are two sawfish, a species from the Indo-Pacific, with the long toothed snout that gives them their name.
Mermaid Lagoon: the manatees
The Aquarium is the only one in Italy, and one of ten in Europe, that keeps manatees. In September 2015 a calf called Tino was born here, to his mother Rynke.
The dolphins, seen from above and from below
The Cetacean Pavilion has four outdoor pools with bottlenose dolphins. You can watch them from the surface and then from below, through a glass wall 24 metres long and an underwater tunnel of about 15 metres.
Penguins in the Kingdom of Ice
The walls are white, like ice, and the pool of the Magellanic penguins reproduces the Falkland Islands. Gentoo penguins live here too, next to some Antarctic fish and invertebrates that no other aquarium in Europe keeps.