Sottomarino Nazario Sauro S-518

The Italian Navy's Nazario Sauro served until 2002. Since 2010, the 63.8-metre submarine has been preserved beside Genoa's maritime museum as a record of life aboard a Cold War vessel.

Why it matters

The S-518 Nazario Sauro was built by Fincantieri for the Marina Militare in 1976, decommissioned in 2002 and transferred to the Mu.MA museum institute. Its preservation retains the vessel's original fittings and equipment, and its hull is a distinctive feature of Genoa's Old Port waterfront.

The submarine records Cold War conditions as a working environment, from stacked bunks and torpedo machinery to its periscopes and control systems.

What to notice

The vessel is 63.8 metres long, 6.8 metres wide and 5.7 metres high, and was designed for a crew of forty-nine. Its compartments combined sleeping, dining and watch functions within a tightly constrained hull. The submarine's periscopes and controls illustrate its operational systems; multimedia materials draw on the Archivio Storico del Muggiano and the Fondazione Fincantieri, including the history of the earlier Regio Battello Delfino. The fourth floor of the maritime museum presents submarine training and Cold War material that situates the Sauro among contemporary American, French and Soviet classes.

Context and history

The name carries the story forward in layers: Nazario Sauro was an Austrian-navy-born Italian naval hero of the First World War, and the S-518 was the boat named for him — it represents a later chapter in the vessel's history. After twenty-six years of service, the vessel was decommissioned in 2002 and transferred to the museum institute in 2010, becoming a record of naval history.

For the city the submarine completes a sequence begun with the 2004 opening of Galata beside it: the port that launched galleys, then liners, then emigrants, now documents the machinery of the sea.