Aquarium of San Sebastián
Stand in the 36-metre glass tunnel and two bull sharks — Txuri and Kontxita, named after the city's own symbols — pass overhead close enough that you can count their scars. The Aquarium of San Sebastián occupies the old port beside the Parte Vieja, in a 1928 building its architect Juan Carlos Guerra called the Palacio del Mar, the Palace of the Sea.
Three floors move from Gipuzkoa's maritime past — fishing culture, navigation history, the bones of a right whale suspended from the ceiling since 1934 — up through the Oceanarium's 360-degree tunnel, where roughly forty species circle in a single tank. The top terrace opens onto La Concha Bay and the Santa Clara island sitting in the middle of it.
💛 What travellers fall for
Regulars tend to time a visit for Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday at noon, when divers drop into the tunnel tank to feed the bull sharks, rays and turtles. After that, the rooftop restaurant with grilled octopus and a view of the Bay of Biscay makes a reasonable argument for staying longer than the two hours most people plan.
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How Aquarium of San Sebastián came to be
The Oceanographic Society of Gipuzkoa was founded in 1908, partly inspired by a visit five years earlier from Prince Albert I of Monaco, himself a serious marine researcher. The society campaigned for a permanent facility for years before construction on the Palacio del Mar finally began in 1925. King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia inaugurated it on 1 September 1928.
The building held its original form for decades — the right whale skeleton went up in 1934 and never came down — until a major renovation in the 1990s added the Oceanarium and its tunnel, which opened in 1998. A second, larger renovation between 2007 and 2008 unified the historic and new wings into a single institution; Kings Juan Carlos and Sofía, along with Princess Carolina of Monaco, reopened it in 2009.
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Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.