Aquarium of Genoa

How to visit without queuing or paying over the odds

Book a fixed-date, timed ticket online before you go. It’s about €26 for an adult — roughly £22 — against around €33 if you buy at the desk and about €36 for the open “flexi” ticket that lets you turn up any day within a year. Unless your plans are genuinely uncertain, the dated ticket is the one to get: cheaper, and it pins you to a slot so you skip the worst of the on-the-day queue. Children aged 4–12 start around €16, under-3s are free, and over-65s pay about €20.

The aquarium sits on the Porto Antico, the redeveloped old harbour, a 15-minute walk from the centro storico or Genova Piazza Principe station, with the San Giorgio metro stop two minutes away. It’s open every day of the year, but the hours shift by season — roughly 09:00–20:00 from spring to September, an earlier 08:30 start in July and August, and a later 10:00 weekday opening from October to February. Last admission is 18:00 whatever the season, so don’t leave it for the end of the day.

Worth it for a family day out?

The route is a single one-way loop through about 70 tanks — you can’t easily backtrack — so go in with that in mind and allow 2–3 hours, more if you linger at the dolphin window and the big curved shark cylinder. The thing to dodge is the midday crush: school groups and cruise-ship passengers pile in late morning, and the popular tanks bottleneck. An early-morning or late-afternoon slot is noticeably calmer. If you’ve an hour spare afterwards, the Biosphere glass dome and the Bigo panoramic lift next door bundle into a combo ticket for around €37.

With children, it’s the best single thing to do in Genoa, and as Europe’s largest aquarium the dolphins, sharks and Antarctic penguins deliver. Two caveats. It’s a fixed loop that gets genuinely packed in the middle of the day, and at £22-plus an adult a family of four is past £70 before you’ve bought a coffee — so book early or late, and treat it as a half-day, not a whole one.