| IMO | 9781889 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 185,010 GT |
| Length | 337 m |
| Beam | 42 m |
| Passenger capacity (double) | 5224 |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 6554 |
| Crew | 1646 |
| Service speed | 21.5 knots |
| Builder | Meyer Turku |
| Yard | Turku |
| Hull number | 1394 |
| Launched | 2019 |
| Maiden voyage | 2019 |
| Class | Excellence-class cruise ship |
| Operator | Costa Cruises |
| Status | Active |
Overview
Costa Smeralda is the flagship with which Costa Cruises entered the LNG era, and the largest ship ever built for the Italian line. Delivered from Meyer Turku in December 2019, she was the second ship in the world to be built for liquefied natural gas propulsion, after her near-sister AIDAnova, and the second ship of Carnival Corporation's Excellence platform.
She is named not after a person or a previous Costa ship but after a coastline: the Costa Smeralda, the "Emerald Coast" of north-eastern Sardinia. The name sets the ship's whole theme. She was designed and marketed as a floating celebration of Italy — its design, food and landscape — and she carries an onboard museum of Italian design to prove it.
Her debut was difficult. Construction delays postponed her delivery twice and pushed her maiden voyage from October to late December 2019, cancelling the planned inaugural festivities.
Key specifications
The dataset records her at 185,010 GT, 337 m long and 42 m in beam, with 5,224 guests at double occupancy, 6,554 at maximum, a crew of 1,646 and a speed of 21.5 knots, built as Meyer Turku hull 1394. Press coverage at her float-out often quoted 183,900 GT, the platform's design figure; the dataset's 185,010 GT, referenced to RINA in her article, is the measured figure used here.
The dataset leaves her ship class blank, and the spec box therefore omits it — but she is in fact a member of Carnival's Excellence class, in its Costa form often called the Excel class, sharing a platform with AIDAnova, Iona, Mardi Gras and her own sister Costa Toscana. She has about 2,612 cabins across some twenty decks.
Design and construction
Costa Smeralda belongs to the generation of Carnival Corporation ships designed around a common LNG platform that could be built in two countries — Meyer Werft at Papenburg and Meyer Turku in Finland — and dressed for several brands. Costa's ship was built at Turku, with the sister yard Neptun Werft at Rostock supplying a large floating engine-room section containing her main and auxiliary machinery, which was towed to Finland and integrated into the hull.
Steel cutting took place at Turku on 13 September 2017, the occasion on which her name was announced. Hull assembly began with keel-laying and coin ceremonies on 4 July 2018, and she was floated out on 15 March 2019. Sea trials began on 7 October 2019, with a second round from 16 November.
Her propulsion is the design's headline: Caterpillar/MaK dual-fuel machinery able to run on LNG in port and at sea, eliminating sulphur and particulate emissions and sharply reducing nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide against conventional fuel. Costa also fitted desalination plant to produce much of the ship's water from the sea.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
Her naming at steel-cutting was a marketing statement: Costa announced its first LNG ship would be named for the Sardinian coast that had become a byword for Italian glamour. She was floated out in March 2019 as above.
Delivery was originally planned for October 2019, with a 15-day maiden voyage from Hamburg to Savona and a christening at Savona on 3 November. On 16 September 2019 yard and line announced a month's delay, citing the technical complexity of the project; on 29 October came a second postponement. The Hamburg debut was abandoned, the maiden voyage moved to Savona and finally set for 21 December 2019. She had been delivered on 5 December 2019. Her christening, by her godmother Penélope Cruz, eventually took place at Savona on 22 February 2020 — weeks before European cruising shut down entirely.
Career by operator
She has carried one name for one operator.
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 2019–present | Costa Smeralda | Costa Cruises |
Her career has been that of a single-market flagship: a large ship deployed on Western Mediterranean cruising year-round, in the pattern set at her debut, rather than repositioned between hemispheres as many big Carnival ships are. She remained Costa's largest and newest-generation ship until her sister Costa Toscana joined in 2022, and the two now form the line's LNG pair.
Onboard character
No Costa ship has been more programmatic about its theme. At her centre is the Colosseo, a three-deck open space at the heart of the ship topped by a digital dome that displays Italian landscapes — a Roman name for an Italian ship's atrium, used for shows and events through the day and evening. Around it, the ship's public rooms were named and styled as an Italian itinerary: terraces, piazzas and promenades evoking Italian places, and a stern terrace modelled on a Mediterranean waterfront.
The most distinctive single feature is CoDe, the Costa Design Museum — a permanent onboard museum of contemporary Italian design, unique among large cruise ships and a serious statement of intent: the ship was meant to exhibit the country, not just to serve its food, though food was also organised by Italian region and overseen by the line's chef partners. Her character, in sum, is national branding executed at the scale of a 185,000-ton ship.
Major refits and incidents
The events of record in her early career are her two construction postponements in September and October 2019, which cancelled her planned inaugural programme — themselves the fourth and fifth substantial delivery delays suffered by the Excellence platform, AIDAnova having been delayed twice the year before. Contemporary coverage also reported a small fire on board during her construction period.
No casualty in service, and no major refit, is recorded in the sources used for this guide; she is a recent ship whose history so far is one of delayed arrival and then steady service.
Sister ships and class
Her direct sister is Costa Toscana, Meyer Turku hull 1395, delivered in 2021 and in service from March 2022 — the second LNG ship built for Costa, to the same platform. Beyond her, she belongs to the wider Excellence family built for Carnival Corporation brands: AIDAnova and AIDAcosma for AIDA, Iona and Arvia for P&O Cruises, and Mardi Gras, Carnival Celebration and Carnival Jubilee for Carnival Cruise Line. The platform is the defining large-ship design of its period: one hull and machinery package, several national brands.
Fate and where she is now
Costa Smeralda is in active service with Costa Cruises, recorded in the dataset as status active and fate "Operating". She remains, with her sister, one of the two largest ships in the Costa fleet and the line's LNG flagship, and no change of name, operator or status has been reported in the sources used here.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Smeralda_(ship), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excellence-class_cruise_ship