Palais princier de Monaco

The Prince's Palace began as a Genoese fortress: in 1215 work started on a curtain wall and four towers on the Rock, and in 1297 the Grimaldis took it. Charles Grimaldi (1331–1357) added two large buildings and made it a fortified residence; Lambert Grimaldi (1458–1494) and his son Jean II began turning it into a palace, with a three-storey main wing and a two-storey loggia of five arches. Lucien added the wing that now holds the State Apartments, and in 1529 the palace was enlarged to receive Charles V for four nights on his way to his coronation in Bologna.

Inside, the cour d'honneur has a seventeenth-century staircase with balusters of black Portor marble modelled on the horseshoe stair at Fontainebleau; the gallery ceilings were painted by Orazio de Ferrari, the north wing by Luca Cambiaso, and restoration in the late 2010s uncovered sixteenth-century frescoes behind a false ceiling. The Tour Sainte-Marie flies the sovereign's standard when the Prince is in residence. Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene married in the courtyard on 2 July 2011, and the State Apartments open to visitors in summer.