This full-day tour trades a fishing village lunch stop for Europe's marine life, pairing a morning at one of the continent's largest aquariums with two contrasting old towns in the afternoon.
Your guide meets you in Portofino and drives you first to the Aquarium of Genoa, designed by architect Renzo Piano and opened in 1992. Spread across 27,000 square meters, it is the largest aquarium in Italy and one of the largest in Europe, home to more than 500 species and around 12,000 animals, from sharks and dolphins to penguins and reef fish. You have free time for lunch on your own afterward at a nearby pizzeria or restaurant (meal not included).
From the ultramodern aquarium building, you step directly into 800 years of history at the panoramic terrace of Castelletto, overlooking Genoa's historic center, port, and the Lanterna lighthouse. Your guide walks you past Porta Soprana, part of the 1150s Barbarossa walls, close to the reconstructed house associated with Christopher Columbus's family, then on to Piazza De Ferrari and the 13th century Palazzo Ducale, once the seat of the Republic of Genoa's government. In Piazza San Matteo, the medieval quarter of the Doria family, you see striped facades and porticoes largely unchanged for centuries, before visiting the Baroque church of Sant'Andrea and the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, built in stages between the 12th and 14th centuries.
In the afternoon you return to Portofino for a walking tour of the harbor: past the Oratory of Santa Maria Assunta with its ceremonial Cristi crucifix, up to the church of San Giorgio for the view back down over the water, and along the path through the Regional Park to the lighthouse and its outlook over the Tigullio Gulf. After a day that starts underwater and ends on a cliffside terrace, you will see why this stretch of coast draws visitors back again and again.
Review Location- Portofino 
