The Civic Museum of the Sea is one of the most important of its kind in the whole Mediterranean area, and is intended to show the importance of the sea in Trieste's history and the contribution made by Trieste and her people. From the panels about Trieste and Salt production, visitors come to the rooms dedicated to the inventor Marconi where a model of his ship - the Electra, from which the first wireless telegraph message was transmitted - can be seen, and to Ressel who carried out the first experiments into the use of the propeller in ships with a steam engine. The Museum dates back to 1888, when the Società di Pesca e Pescicoltura Marina began to plan what in 1904 became the Museum of Fishing, with connected laboratories for biological analysis. The collection of the Nautical School went on to form the Permanent Maritime Exhibition which found a home in the building in Via Campo Marzio in the Lazzaretto San Carlo, where today there are models of both primitive and mediaeval boats with explanatory panels about the evolution of boats and in particular of the development of those from the Mediterranean.

Point of interest
One of the most exciting sections of the Museum concerns the age-old method of extracting salt, which is based on a complex system of crystalisation basins and was used along the whole of the Adriatic coast. The display includes a model re-creating part of the salt-works at Semedella, near Capodistria.