It is an interesting museum, with paintings, comprehensive descriptions and a lot of models of ships of every type and age, along with real scale models of captain and officer's rooms on XIX century ships. I was stricken by one particularity: in spite of illustrating and documenting navigation throughout the ages and specially from the late Middle Age onwards, the museum manages to avoid mentioning Portugal or the outstanding Portuguese navigation school one single time! They even managed to portray the Portuguese traditional work-horse ship - the caravel - as a Venetian ship. Having shared the world (literally, by the Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494, by which the Pope divided the world in two hemispheres, assigning one half to each of the Iberian nations) they carefully avoid a single reference to the other XV century super-power! Elcano is widely mentioned for having circum-navigated the globe while his captain, the world renowned Magellan (Magalhães) is scarcely referred, possibly for being Portuguese. The same goes to Columbus who lived in Portugal since his early youth, learning everything he knew about cartography and sailing in Portugal, and actually being a Portuguese citizen after having married the daughter of an important Portuguese navigator who discovered the Island of Madeira. So, this is what I think is special about this museum: documenting world navigation without ever mentioning the leading sea-going nation in History - Portugal. That's not easy but they have achieved it. Mind you, the museum is rather comprehensive... they even portray a ceremonial Chinese paper-boat... It seems that everyone somehow gets on board, just not their neighbouring country.