Monaco

The Grimaldis, a Genoese family of the Guelph faction, seized the fortified rock of Monaco in 1297 — by tradition through François Grimaldi, who talked his way in disguised as a monk, an episode still marked by the two sword-bearing monks on the coat of arms. Over the following centuries the family held Monaco along with the nearby towns of Menton and Roquebrune, under the protection at various times of Spain, France, and Sardinia.

In 1848 Menton and Roquebrune broke away, and an 1861 treaty confirmed their loss to France in exchange for French recognition of Monaco's independence, leaving the principality at roughly its present tiny size and close to bankruptcy. The remedy was the casino: Prince Charles III chartered the Société des Bains de Mer, and the gaming house that opened in 1863 in a new district named Monte-Carlo — "Charles's Mount" — after him was so profitable that Monaco abolished income tax in 1869.

That decision shaped everything since. The Monte-Carlo Rally began in 1911 and the street-circuit Grand Prix in 1929. Prince Rainier III married the American actress Grace Kelly in 1956; a 1962 dispute with France over tax was settled by a new constitution and an agreement that French residents would still be taxed by France while others would not. Monaco joined the United Nations in 1993. Prince Albert II has reigned since 2005, and land reclaimed from the sea has enlarged the country by about a fifth, most recently with the Mareterra district completed in 2024.

Monaco is Catholic by tradition — the cathedral holds the Grimaldi tombs, including those of Rainier and Grace — and its calendar turns on royal and religious dates: Sainte Dévote, the patron saint, on 27 January, when a boat is ceremonially burned; and National Day on 19 November. The changing of the Carabiniers outside the Prince's Palace at 11:55 each morning is a fixed ritual.

Of the roughly 38,000 residents, only around a quarter are Monégasque citizens, who enjoy housing protections and social benefits and are, by a long-standing rule, barred from gambling in the casino. Everyone else is a foreign resident — French, Italian, British, and wealthy individuals from around the world — making this one of the most international small places anywhere.

High culture is well funded for the size: the Monte-Carlo Opera in the Salle Garnier, the ballet and philharmonic, and society galas such as the Rose Ball and the Red Cross Ball. The Oceanographic Museum, founded by the sailor-scientist Prince Albert I and once directed by Jacques Cousteau, reflects a genuine princely interest in the sea that continues in Albert II's environmental advocacy.

Monaco is intensely vertical and dense, its buildings stacked up a steep hillside and linked by public lifts, escalators, and walkways between street levels. It is spotless and heavily policed, with one of the highest ratios of police and cameras to residents in the world and correspondingly low crime.

Most of the people who make the principality work do not live in it: tens of thousands commute in each day from the French and Italian coast to jobs in hospitality, retail, construction, banking, and the state's own monopoly businesses. Real estate is the most expensive on Earth, and the resident population skews old and rich.

The state funds itself without an income tax through value-added tax, the profits of the Société des Bains de Mer, a tax on companies that earn much of their money abroad, and monopolies in areas such as tobacco. Everyday life for visitors and residents alike runs on French — the shops, the schools, the administration — with Italian and English close behind.

Monégasque cooking is a branch of the Niçoise and Ligurian kitchen. The local specialities are barbagiuan, fried pastry parcels stuffed with chard and cheese; socca, a large chickpea-flour pancake cooked on a griddle; pissaladière, an onion tart with anchovies; stocafi, dried cod stewed in tomato; and fried courgette flowers. Fougasse monégasque, a flat bread flavoured with anise and studded with nuts and aniseed sweets, is the traditional treat.

At the other end of the scale, Monaco has a dense cluster of Michelin-starred restaurants, led by Alain Ducasse's Le Louis XV in the Hôtel de Paris, and the café terraces of the Casino square and Port Hercule are institutions in their own right. There is no local wine; the rosés of neighbouring Provence fill in.

Monaco-Ville, "the Rock", is the old core: the Prince's Palace and its square with the daily guard change, the Cathedral, the narrow lanes, and the Oceanographic Museum built into the cliff face, with aquariums below and sea views from the roof. Monte-Carlo, across the harbour, centres on the ornate Casino de Monte-Carlo and its square, the Café de Paris, the Hôtel de Paris, and the Opera.

Port Hercule, the deep-water harbour, is lined with superyachts and hosts a major boat show each September; walking its quays takes you along parts of the Grand Prix circuit, past the Fairmont hairpin and the tunnel mouth. Below the Rock, the Fontvieille district has the Princess Grace Rose Garden, a small classic-car collection, and the football stadium.

The Jardin Exotique, clinging to a cliff with a cave beneath it, and the small Japanese Garden by the sea give some green, and the beach at Larvotto is the main place to swim. The surrounding Riviera — Nice, the perched village of Èze, Menton, and the corniche roads with their high viewpoints — is all within a short train or bus ride.