Galata Maritime Museum

The Galata Maritime Museum in Genoa is the largest maritime museum in the Mediterranean, offering an immersive journey through five centuries of maritime history, including exhibits on Christopher Columbus, ship reconstructions, and the submarine Nazario Sauro.

Planning your visit

The Galata is the largest maritime museum in the Mediterranean, and Genoa earns it — this was one of the great maritime republics, a rival to Venice, and the city built its wealth on the sea for the better part of a thousand years. The museum occupies a former shipyard building in the old port and runs across five centuries, from the galleys of the republic through the age of sail to the steamships that carried Italian emigrants to the Americas.

Two things stand out. The full-scale reconstruction of a seventeenth-century Genoese galley, which visitors board, conveys the conditions of oared warfare better than any description — including the reality of the rowers' lives. And the migration section, covering the millions who left Italy from this port between 1860 and the 1970s, reconstructs the passage in detail and then follows the arrival, including at Ellis Island. Genoa was the departure point for a substantial share of the Italian diaspora.

The submarine Nazario Sauro is moored alongside and can be toured — the only Italian submarine visitable afloat, and genuinely claustrophobic in a useful way.

Allow three hours for museum and submarine together. Bookable options combine both. Current availability is listed below.