Siracusa's sea museum, called Sirmuma, is in Ortigia, on foro Vittorio Emanuele II, better known as the Marina.
What to see
The museum was born of the need to preserve and show Siracusa's deep-rooted seafaring tradition. On the site you can find and visit models of ships built by shipwrights, or naval carpenters, and a collection declared by the Sicilian Region to be of exceptional ethno-anthropological interest, concerning seafaring tools, about two hundred pieces, gathered in Siracusa's shipyard.
According to the museum's official website, this museum area is the only one in the southern Mediterranean in which the entire chain of naval carpentry has been reconstructed, from the drawing and initial design to the final building of the boats.
Visiting
The museum is on the Marina of Ortigia; opening hours, tickets and closing days should be checked on the official website before visiting.
Our editors' tip
Look closely at the shipyard tools: in a city that has lived on the sea for millennia, they are the most concrete part of the seafaring tradition, and explain better than the models how a boat came to be.
