At the Trieste Civic Aquarium, among local marine species and amphibians
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A microcosm of Friuli Venezia Giulia’s aquatic wildlife, it has retained the educational layout for which it was designed in the 1930s.
All the habitats of the Adriatic Sea
The Trieste Municipal Aquarium was established in 1933 in a seafront building that previously served as the Central Fish Market. The clock tower on the left-hand side is actually a water tower, which houses a tank into which water taken directly from the sea is pumped and then delivered by gravity to the ground floor, where the tanks are located.
Recently refurbished, the Trieste Municipal Aquarium has updated its exhibition route with a new touch tank, but has retained its focus on displaying mainly the local fauna of the Adriatic Sea, and of the Gulf of Trieste in particular, with the sole exception of a tank dedicated to coral reefs.
On the ground floor, visitors can see around thirty tanks, including a larger central tank with small sharks, while the smaller tanks depict various habitats found in the Gulf of Trieste (from mussel farms to wrecks, piers and pelagic environments) and species that live in the Mediterranean Sea, such as sea bream, sea bass, redfish, snapper, moray eels and lobsters.
Life in a karst pond
On the upper floor, there is a vivarium: here, the habitat of the karst ponds found in the eastern part of Friuli Venezia Giulia has been recreated, providing a home for common toads, European green frogs and Italian tree frogs. In the various display cases, you can also see three species of vipers from north-eastern Italy, while the vertical terrarium houses large tropical reptiles such as iguanas, pythons and boa constrictors.
