Built at a cost of £45.5 million, the Millennium project, it is said, holds the key to us all gaining a more meaningful understanding of the world's oceans and, more to the point, its amazing inhabitants.
Until this giant lump of real estate appeared on a quayside in Hull, an old, hackneyed gag rolled around Yorkshire which said if you had the misfortune to visit Hull, it wasn't the end of the world - but you could see it from there.
Even the city's marketing chief, John Tiil, was refreshingly honest when he told me: "We carried out an intensive survey which showed Hull had absolutely no perception at all as a tourist destination."
But that was six years ago.
And I am here to tell the knockers and detractors that the city is very much alive and well - and thrashing.
True, it is at the very end of the M62 motorway, perched on a lip of land running into the North Sea.
It is also end of the line for trains to Yorkshire's East Coast.
But, if you are looking for an intriguing, affordable short break alternative, Hull offers a highly talkable weekend or mid-week option.
For example, more than half-a-million visitors have gasped, enthused and left The Deep in stunned wonderment, since it first revealed its secrets just five months ago.
Your journey begins in a theatrically-lit, three-dimensional fossil wall towering more than ten metres above learning modules showing the birth of our planet and the first forms of marine life.
You journey, along gently sloping walkways, downwards from the shallows of a coral lagoon to the inky, almost impenetrable depths where your only companions are silent, weaving sharks, whose skins glint in the murky lighting.
And in the Polar tank, some 24 metres long, melting ice actually trickles down, giving you an unerring sense of being in a real ice cavern.
But you only appreciate the true scale of The Deep when you stand in Deep Blue One, a futuristic research station on the ocean floor and gaze upward toward the pale light highlighting the scores of fish gliding and pushing their way through the water.
And before you come back to reality there is one final piece of magic ... a ride through ten metres of ocean in a transparent lift.
But even when you leave The Deep, it is very hard to forget Hull's long and proud links with the sea.
In truth, Hull is facing a bright new beginning - so there!
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