The Most Remarkable Aquariums in the World
5 places in 4 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable aquariums in the world are L'Oceanogràfic (Spain), Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan (Japan) and Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium (Japan). The list covers 5 aquariums in 4 countries. Japan has the most, with 2. Last updated 13 October 2026.
An aquarium reaches world rank when it does more than display fish behind glass. The great ones build entire seas indoors: tanks deep enough for whale sharks and manta rays, walkways that spiral down through layers of an ocean, windows so large that the water seems to stand upright in front of you. Architecture is half of the experience — the building announces the sea before you enter it, and the light filtering through the water does the rest.
The aquariums in this collection are each a landmark in their own right. L'Oceanogràfic in Valencia, part of the City of Arts and Sciences, gathers marine habitats from around the world beneath a water-lily roof by Félix Candela. Osaka's Kaiyukan leads visitors around a central tank modelled on the Pacific Ocean. Den Blå Planet near Copenhagen, designed by 3XN, takes the shape of a whirlpool in aluminium cladding beside the Øresund. The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium holds the Kuroshio Sea, one of the largest aquarium tanks ever built, and the Lisbon Oceanarium, designed by Peter Chermayeff for Expo 98, stands on the water of Lisbon's old docks.
Every aquarium here was chosen for how it looks and placed in order of beauty. Each has its own text, a photograph credited to its author and a point on the map, and the section also opens country by country on separate pages.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | L'Oceanogràfic | Public aquarium | Spain | |
| 2 | Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan | Public aquarium | Japan | |
| 3 | Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium | Public aquarium | Japan | |
| 4 | Lisbon Oceanarium | Public aquarium | Portugal | |
| 5 | Den Blå Planet, Copenhagen | Public aquarium | Denmark |
01 L'Oceanogràfic
Oceanográfico
Spain · 6 km from Valencia39.453° N 0.348° W
Diliff · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Oceanogràfic is an aquarium that is worth seeing before you look into a single tank. Its entrance buildings are crowned by thin concrete shells curved into hyperbolic paraboloids, the saddle-shaped surfaces that the Spanish-Mexican engineer Félix Candela made his life's work; he designed the complex in 1997, at the age of 87, with Alberto Domingo and Carlos Lázaro. The largest of the shells opens like a water lily, its petals touching the ground at only a few points, and its edges are so fine that the whole roof seems folded from paper rather than cast. It is a late and very pure statement of the principle behind all his work: that geometry, not mass, can make concrete stand.
Did you know? It is the only major building of Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences not designed by Santiago Calatrava.
02 Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan
Japan · 8 km from Osaka34.654° N 135.429° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan opened in 1990 on the Tempozan waterfront of Osaka Bay, and at the time it was the largest public aquarium in the world. Its conceptual and exhibit design came from Peter Chermayeff of the Cambridge Seven Associates practice in the United States. The building announces itself from a distance: a tall block in three bands of colour meant to evoke the union of earth, water and fire, with a mural of fish painted on the outer wall by the designer's father, the English-born designer Serge Chermayeff.
Did you know? The name Kaiyukan was picked by TV personality Emiko Kaminuma on the naming committee, although it had received only a single public vote.
03 Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium
Japan26.694° N 127.878° E
Image by Yukaloha from Pixabay The reason to come is a single wall of water. The Kuroshio Sea, the aquarium's main tank, is 35 metres long, 27 metres wide and 10 metres deep, holds 7,500 cubic metres of seawater and is viewed through an acrylic panel 8.2 by 22.5 metres and 60 centimetres thick – the largest such panel in the world when the building opened in 2002. Named after the warm current that sweeps past the Ryukyu Islands, it is stocked with the open-ocean giants of these waters: whale sharks gliding slowly across the glass, manta rays banking beneath them, and schools of fish that turn the whole tank into one moving surface. Standing in the dim hall in front of it feels less like looking into a tank than like looking out of a submarine.
Did you know? In 2020 its researchers became the first to raise shark embryos to birth in an artificial uterus, hatching two deep-sea lanternsharks after five months.
04 Lisbon Oceanarium
Oceanário de Lisboa
Portugal · 6.3 km from Lisbon38.764° N 9.094° W
Alvesgaspar · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Lisbon Oceanarium was built for Expo '98, the world's fair that created the riverside district of Parque das Nações, and it has outlived the exhibition to draw around a million visitors a year. The architect, Peter Chermayeff, set the building on a pier in the middle of an artificial lagoon, so that it seems to float on the water like a moored ship; its angular silhouette has often been compared to an aircraft carrier. The watery approach is part of the design: you cross to the aquarium as if boarding a vessel.
Did you know? The Oceanarium stands on the former site of Cabo Ruivo, Lisbon's old seaplane airport on the Tagus estuary.
05 Den Blå Planet, Copenhagen
Den Blå Planet
Denmark · 7.6 km from Copenhagen55.638° N 12.656° E
Image by StudioKlick from Pixabay The Blue Planet begins before you are inside. Seen from the air, or from a plane dropping into Copenhagen Airport next door, the building is a spiral of curved arms unwinding from a central core, like water swirling into a drain. The Danish practice 3XN took the whirlpool as its idea and followed it through: the facade is clad in tens of thousands of small diamond-shaped aluminium shingles that shift in tone with the angle and the weather, the building stands on a headland on the Øresund shore ringed by a reflecting pool, and visitors enter at the eye of the vortex, a curving lobby from which the exhibits spin off along each arm.
Did you know? Its oldest fish is an Australian lungfish that arrived at the old Charlottenlund aquarium in 1967 as a young adult, so its true age is unknown.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What is the most beautiful aquarium in the world?
- On our list, L'Oceanogràfic (Spain) ranks first, followed by Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan (Japan) and Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium (Japan).
- Which aquarium has whale sharks?
- Both the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium and the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan in Japan are known for keeping whale sharks in their main ocean tanks.
- Which country has the most remarkable aquariums?
- In our collection, the most come from Japan (2), Denmark (1) and Portugal (1).
- Who designed the Lisbon Oceanarium?
- The Lisbon Oceanarium was designed by the American architect Peter Chermayeff for the 1998 World Exposition, Expo 98.
- How many aquariums are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 5 aquariums in 4 countries. Japan has the most, with 2.