Description
Milan's Civic Aquarium is a small Art Nouveau building in the Sempione Park area, the only one left from the 1906 International Exposition: the third-oldest aquarium in Europe, with fish and habitats from both fresh water and the sea.
The facade alone is worth stopping for: floral majolica tiles by Richard-Ginori, water-themed reliefs and, in the center, a statue of Neptune above a hippopotamus-head fountain.
Inside, the route follows the water from mountain stream to sea, across twenty-two tanks: trout and grayling from Alpine rivers, Lake Como, carp and pike from the plain, sturgeon and eels from the estuary. Then the sea, with seahorses, jellyfish, an octopus and a Red Sea coral reef.
The aquarium was paid for by Duke Giuseppe Crivelli Serbelloni and designed by Sebastiano Locati. Bombs badly damaged it in August 1943: it reopened only twenty years later, in 1963, and the restoration completed for its hundredth anniversary gave it back its original look.
The facade alone is worth stopping for: floral majolica tiles by Richard-Ginori, water-themed reliefs and, in the center, a statue of Neptune above a hippopotamus-head fountain.
Inside, the route follows the water from mountain stream to sea, across twenty-two tanks: trout and grayling from Alpine rivers, Lake Como, carp and pike from the plain, sturgeon and eels from the estuary. Then the sea, with seahorses, jellyfish, an octopus and a Red Sea coral reef.
The aquarium was paid for by Duke Giuseppe Crivelli Serbelloni and designed by Sebastiano Locati. Bombs badly damaged it in August 1943: it reopened only twenty years later, in 1963, and the restoration completed for its hundredth anniversary gave it back its original look.