
The building, the oldest surviving among those that made up the ancient Dock municipal, has undergone a highly prestigious renovation, in stone and crystal, designed by the Spanish architect Guillermo Vasquez Consuegro. The museum complex, which includes around 6000 objects, follows the evolution of the port and the maritime city and includes, among its jewels, the faithful reconstruction of a 600th century Genoese galley.
The visitor is led through more traditional rooms, but can also explore the environments of the Arsenale, visit the Darsena armoury, browse through precious sixteenth-century atlases with a multimedia support, climb aboard a nineteenth-century Ligurian brigantine, until going through a storm at Cape Horn virtually reconstructed. More recently the Galata has renovated the third floor with exhibitions and installations relating to the themes of travel between the 800th and 900th centuries, such as the Steamer Room and the great exhibition "America!” on Italian emigration.
In the first, the deck of a steamship is reconstructed from whose wheelhouse, thanks to sophisticated software, one can virtually navigate the seas of the world.
In the second, equipped with a passport and travel documents, the visitor can live the experience of emigration with departure and arrival in Ellis Island, New York.