The museum is located near the cruise ship terminal in Genoa. Traffic was nowhere near as bad as La Spezia, and there was quite a bit of parking available in the area.This is a general maritime museum - it has four floors with very high quality galleries, including two full-size replica vessels (a galley and a sailing ship), along with recreations of the interior of a transatlantic liner, and a dedicated gallery to the liner Andrea Doria which was lost in collision with the Stockholm a number of years ago. However, there is very little within the museum relating to modern naval history - just a couple of small galleries on submarines.The main naval attraction is the submarine Nazario Sauro, which is berthed about 100ft from the museum. This is a relatively modern submarine (it is a bit of a worry when ships I remember as being new become museums!), which has been fully opened for visitors. Access is via stairs from the casing, through what looks to be a hole that has been cut in the deck (it looks too big for a hatch) into the stern compartment, you walk the length of the submarine on the main deck, then back up another set of stairs from the bow torpedo compartment through another hole in the deck. It is a self-guided tour, and you are free to take as long as you like as you go through. Although it was advertised as being open from 10am, for some reason it only opened at 11 today, even though the rest of the museum was open at 10.Compared to other submarines I have been on of a similar size, this one is quite short and beamy, which does make her quite spacious. Another thing that was different to any other conventional boat I have been on was that they had living quarters downstairs - most submarines just have storerooms, batteries, motors etc down there. The submarine looked to be in pretty good condition.They had quite a bit of signage about the history of the submarine on the wharf next to the boat - trilingual (English/Italian/French). There was a shop in the maritime museum, but none of the books had anything to do with submarines (or warships for that matter).
Links:
Galata Museo del Mare | Genova