Over a hundred species of fish, crustaceans, molluscs and echinoderms from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, plus rare tropical and freshwater fish. You can even see them in the new tanks and even from below, when you are in the glass tunnel inside Milan’s Civic Aquarium.The exciting exhibition sequence is heralded, even before going inside, by the fountain featuring the god Neptune, part of the façade decoration. The Aquarium is in fact housed inside a superb Art Nouveau building, with exterior decorations on aquatic themes, arranged around the god of the sea.Inside, an illustrated sequence introduces visitors to the cycle of precipitation and evaporation and its relationship to the creation of ecosystems.The building in which the Aquarium is housed is also the location for the Hydrobiological Station and the specialist Library for marine biology and aquatic science, an ideal location for learning more about life in the sea.
The Aquarium building is the only surviving building from those constructed for the 1906 International Exposition that occupied the area of Parco Sempione and the Milan Fair. The Liberty-style building was designed by the architect Sebastiano Locati.
At the end of the exposition, the organising committee gifted the site to the Municipality of Milan and, after the partial destruction caused by air-raids in 1943, the aquarium was reconstructed in 1963. In 1983, a new refurbishment saw the inside partially modified and it remained that way until the latest restoration in 2006 that returned the aquarium to its original splendour, at the same time modernising the technical-scientific section.