The Musée Océanographique was founded in 1889 by Prince Albert I, the navigator-prince, and inaugurated in 1910 after some eleven years of building. Paul Delefortrie drew the plans; the Neo-Baroque façade rises more than 85 metres from the sea up the cliff of the Rock, about a hundred metres long, in white La Turbie stone, with allegorical groups by Gustave Dussart unveiled in 1903. Albert founded the Institut Océanographique, which runs it, in 1906.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau directed the museum from 1957 to 1988. Its aquariums hold some 350 species of fish in about a hundred tanks, around a shark lagoon opened in 2001; since 2010 the ground floor has shown contemporary art, Damien Hirst and Marc Quinn among the artists, and the roof terrace looks out over the coast.
Practical
- Address
- Avenue Saint-Martin, Monaco-Ville
- Opening hours
- Oct-Mar 10:00-18:00; Apr-Jun,Sep 10:00-19:00; Jul-Aug 10:00-20:00; Dec 25 offas tagged in OpenStreetMap – check before you go
- In the building
- Oceanographic Museum of MonacoMuseum
- Nearest bus stop
- Monaco-Ville le Rocherline 1, line 2, line 5, line 22, line N2 · 2 min on foot
- From the Casino
- 17 min on footestimate, with the stairs and lifts
- From the Palais
- 8 min on footestimate, with the stairs and lifts
Nearby
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Its own link and its own card – for a message, a story or a plan for the evening.
Sources
Name, kind, address and opening hours: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0.
Wikipédia (fr) : Musée océanographique de Monaco
Mon Service Public (gouv.mc): Museums
Buses: Compagnie des Autobus de Monaco GTFS (Licence Ouverte 2.0).
Photo: saiko3p/Adobe Stock
Official website musee.oceano.org