At least 30 people are believed to have died when the ship struck rocks off the Tuscan coast on 13 January.
Captain Francesco Schettino denies accusations of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship before all those aboard were evacuated.
He will not attend the hearing, in the town of Grosseto, his lawyer says.
Bruno Leporatti said it would be “unnecessary” for Mr Schettino to leave his home in the town of Meta di Sorrento, near Naples – where he is under house arrest – to attend the hearing.
“Perhaps with this climate that has been created around him, also a little dangerous for him,” he said.
Mr Schettino’s brother-in-law has said that the captain is feeling both depressed and scared as he watches the inquiry unfold, and that the deaths of those who did not survive are weighing heavily upon him.
His lawyer added that Mr Schettino was “stunned” by the accident.
“He is a man who has feelings, who is pained over what happened,” he said.
Some 250 people have gathered in a theatre in Grosseto that has become the venue for the hearing, according to Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper.
The number is expected to swell further as 70 lawyers and their teams, representing survivors and relatives of victims, continue to arrive.
No journalists or members of the public are allowed to attend.
During the hearing, judges will question experts about the wrecking of the 114,500-tonne liner.
Investigators who have been amassing evidence and testimony since the crash will hand it over to a court-appointed panel of experts made up of two naval experts and two academics.
The BBC’s Alan Johnston, in Rome, says these four will have the task of trying to reconstruct what happened and apportion degrees of culpability and blame. He says the process will probably take months.
The ship, carrying 4,200 passengers and crew, had its hull ripped open when it hit rocks in darkness, just hours into a Mediterranean cruise.
