The quick answer: Palma Aquarium is genuinely worth visiting – particularly for families and anyone curious about Mediterranean and tropical marine life. The shark tunnel alone justifies the trip. Adult tickets run approximately €24.50; children aged 5-12 pay around €16.50; under 4s enter free. Allow 2-3 hours. The aquarium is in s’Arenal, 15 minutes from Palma Old Town by taxi or bus. Book tickets online to skip the entrance queue in summer. This guide covers everything: how to get there, what to see, how long to allow, and the honest verdict on whether it belongs in your Palma itinerary.
🌿 Insider Tip: In July and August, Palma Aquarium runs a Night Zoo on Friday and Saturday evenings until 22:00 – nocturnal feeding demonstrations, ambient lighting, and a fraction of the daytime crowd. Standard admission applies. If your visit falls on a weekend in peak summer, this is significantly better than arriving at 11am when queue times and temperatures peak together.
There are around 8,000 aquariums in the world. Most are variations on the same idea: fish in glass, informational plaques, gift shop at the exit. Palma Aquarium is something rarer – a well-designed facility with genuine conservation credentials and a shark tank deep enough to produce a moment of genuine awe. It sits at the southern end of the city in a modern building that opens onto a Mediterranean garden designed to replicate the island’s coastal ecosystem.
On an island with a reputation for tourist attractions that over-promise and quietly disappoint, this one holds up. For anyone building a Palma de Mallorca itinerary, it earns its place – particularly for families or anyone who wants something absorbing for half a day that doesn’t involve another church or another beach.
What Is Palma Aquarium?
Palma Aquarium (Aquarium de Palma) opened in 2007 and holds one of Europe’s deepest shark tanks – a seven-metre-deep, 2.5-million-litre pool that allows visitors to walk through a transparent tunnel at the base while sharks, rays, and large pelagic fish move overhead. Beyond the shark tank, more than 700 species are housed across 55 tanks, organised thematically from the shallow rockpools of the Balearic coastline through to the deep-ocean zones of the Indo-Pacific.
The site also operates as a genuine marine rescue centre. The Palma Aquarium Foundation runs sea turtle rehabilitation programmes and participates in European breeding programmes for endangered species. This isn’t the kind of detail you’d necessarily notice on a family afternoon visit, but it gives the place a seriousness of purpose that distinguishes it from pure entertainment.
Staying in Palma while you explore the island?
Casa Roca is in the heart of Palma’s Old Town – 15 minutes by taxi from the aquarium, and ideally placed for everything else on the island. Our Tasting Palma team can also arrange private island day trips if you’d rather have a guide than a guidebook.
Getting to Palma Aquarium from Old Town
The aquarium is on Carrer de Moranta in s’Arenal – about 12 kilometres from the Old Town, along the eastern curve of the Bay of Palma. It is not within walking distance, but the journey is straightforward by three means.
By Taxi or Rideshare
The most direct option. A taxi from Palma Old Town takes 15-20 minutes and costs approximately €15-20 depending on traffic. Cabify and FreeNow both operate fixed-price rides in Palma – useful for budgeting a family day. Note that Uber does not operate in Mallorca.
By Bus
EMT bus line 25 runs from Plaça Espanya toward s’Arenal and stops near the aquarium. The journey takes around 30 minutes and costs €1.75 per person. In summer, the Palma Beach Train – a tourist tram running along the seafront road – also connects the city centre to s’Arenal. Slower, but children tend to enjoy it, and the seafront route is genuinely pleasant.
By Car
If you’ve hired a car for island driving, the aquarium has a paid car park directly outside. The Ma-19 coastal road runs straight there from Palma in around 20 minutes. Parking costs approximately €2-3 per hour.
Tickets, Opening Hours and Prices
Palma Aquarium opens daily at 10:00. Standard closing time is 18:00 (last entry 17:00), with extended hours in peak summer. Current standard admission:
- Adults (13+): approximately €24.50
- Children (5-12): approximately €16.50
- Children under 4: free
- Family tickets (2 adults + 2 children) available at a small discount
Book online in advance to avoid the entrance queue in July and August. Prices listed are approximate – always check the official Palma Aquarium website for current rates and seasonal promotions before you travel.
Night Zoo: In summer (late June through August), the aquarium opens on Friday and Saturday evenings until 22:00. Standard admission applies. Crowds are noticeably thinner than daytime peak hours – worth factoring in if you have flexibility.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Verified Guest Review
“Traveling with a baby for the first time was a bit daunting, but the team at Casa Roca made it seamless. Gaia and her crew were so kind and proactive, ensuring we had everything we needed without us even asking… A truly welcoming, stress-free environment for young families.”
– Florencia S., TripAdvisor, May 2026 | Travelled with family
What to See Inside
The aquarium is divided into themed zones, moving from the familiar Mediterranean coastline through to open-ocean and tropical environments. The journey feels intentional – you begin in the world you recognise and arrive somewhere entirely strange.
Mediterranean Zone
The opening galleries cover the Balearic coast – rockpools, seagrass meadows, and the marine life that inhabits the waters most visitors only see from a boat or a beach. The seahorse tanks here tend to slow people down longer than anything else in this zone. Well-curated and genuinely informative without feeling like a classroom.
The Big Blue – Shark Tank
The centrepiece. The Big Blue is a 2.5-million-litre tank, seven metres deep, home to sand tiger sharks, bull sharks, blacktip reef sharks, large rays, and several species of open-ocean fish. The transparent tunnel runs through the base of the tank – a 35-metre walk with sharks overhead at intervals that feel both deliberate and completely indifferent to your presence. It is genuinely impressive.
Feeding demonstrations are scheduled twice daily and listed on the programme board at the entrance. The viewing gallery above the tank is worth spending time at – the perspective from above gives a clearer sense of the tank’s scale than the tunnel does.
Coral Tunnel and Tropical Zones
Beyond the shark tank, the aquarium moves into Indo-Pacific and tropical environments – coral reefs, clownfish, lionfish, moray eels, and the electric-blue mandarinfish that appears in virtually every visitor’s photographs. The coral tunnel is a shorter, more intimate version of the shark experience – 12 metres through a reef environment that rewards slow walking.
Ocean Garden and Outdoor Areas
The outdoor sections include a Mediterranean garden and open-topped tanks housing rays, rehabilitating sea turtles, and invertebrates that visitors can observe at close range. On a warm afternoon – most afternoons from May through September – this is a good place to pause between the indoor zones, particularly for families with young children who need room to move.
How Long Does a Visit Take?
Two hours covers the main zones at a comfortable pace. Three hours if you include a feeding demonstration, time in the hands-on sections, and a coffee at the on-site café. The café is functional rather than notable – if you’d rather eat somewhere worth eating, there are good options in s’Arenal or back in the Old Town.
Families with young children should build in extra time. The touch pools, ray tanks, and outdoor sections extend visits in exactly the right direction.
Palma Aquarium with Children
The aquarium works well from around age 3 upwards. The shark tunnel produces real, appropriate wonder across a wide age range. The hands-on elements – touch pools, ray tanks, the outdoor areas – keep younger children actively engaged rather than trailing adults between displays.
Pram and pushchair access is good throughout the building with level access and lifts between floors. The aquarium is one of the more straightforward Palma activities to manage with very young children.
For families planning more of the island, the Drach Caves on Mallorca’s east coast are another strong family day trip – though they’re better kept for a separate day given the 90-minute drive each way from Palma.
Honest Verdict
Palma Aquarium is a genuinely good half-day. It’s not on the scale of the Oceanographic in Valencia or the great European aquariums in Barcelona or Lisbon – but it doesn’t need to be. What it offers is a well-run regional aquarium with an exceptional shark exhibit, solid conservation work, and an outdoor setting that benefits from Mallorca’s climate. For families, it is probably the strongest single indoor activity in Palma. For adults without children, the shark tank justifies the trip; the rest is pleasant.
It belongs in the first two or three days of a Mallorca visit – not because it’s obligatory, but because it builds a good understanding of the sea that surrounds the island. Most of what Mallorca offers is outdoors and aboveground. Spending two hours below it changes how you look at the water for the rest of the trip.
Your base in Palma Old Town
Casa Roca sits in Palma’s Casco Histórico – 15 minutes from the aquarium, steps from the Cathedral, and a 15-minute walk from Can Pere Antoni Beach. Aquarium mornings, cathedral afternoons, beach evenings: the Old Town is where it all connects. Our suites start from €347/night and include daily breakfast delivered to your door.
