Map at Oceanografic, 29/05/11

How long does it take to tour the entire facility? With 110,000 square meters of space, 11 million gallons of water, plus 10 main areas I can see that this is a major establishment that advertises itself as Europe's largest aquarium. Often zoo enthusiasts mention Valencia's Oceanografic and Lisbon's Oceanarium as the two best aquariums on the continent. Does anyone have a preference?

It takes several hours; there are many different pavilions and so it depends on your level of interest, but it can easily be a whole-day aquarium (one of very few, in my eyes).
Between Valencia and Lisbon, I probably preferred Valencia overall. Lisbon is an interesting arrangement based around the brilliant main tank with several interesting exhibits, but the quantity of high quality (and fascinating) displays pushed Valencia to become my favourite aquarium when I visited for the first time in June. I was wondering whether Copenhagen's Blue Planet would overtake it when I visited later that same week, but Valencia still holds my top spot.

I'd probably give the slight edge to Lisbon for aquarium quality, though I agree this is a whole-day place in a way that Lisbon isn't really, which is nice. I was very suprised by the high quality and diversity of the fish/aquatic invertebrate collection at Valencia, as discussion of this side of the place is sometimes overshadowed by the marine mammals.

Thanks for the answers guys! If I'm correct in that Valencia and Lisbon are essentially neck-and-neck for the "best" aquarium in Europe, then what aquatic facilities would round out the top 5?

@snowleopard Nausicaa in Boulogne and Brest Aquarium, both in france. Would be up there. There's also Genoa aquarium in Italy, as well as a few in Scandinavia who's names I cannot recall. I've only been to Nausicaa, so I really couldn't rank them beyond what I've seen on this site.