Monaco-Ville

About Monaco-Ville

Monaco-Ville is the Rock – Le Rocher, A Roca in Monégasque – the headland of about twenty hectares that pushes into the sea between La Condamine and Fontvieille, and the oldest part of the principality. Greeks from Massalia knew a settlement here in the sixth century BC, Monoikos, tied to the cult of Hercules Monoecus. On 10 June 1215 Genoese Ghibellines under Fulco del Cassello began a fortress on the Rock, and on 8 January 1297 François Grimaldi took it disguised as a Franciscan friar.

The Rock still holds the state: the Prince's Palace, the Ministère d'État, the National Council, the town hall, the courts and the country's only prison, clinging to the cliff. Around them the old town is a grid of quiet pedestrian lanes with Renaissance houses; only local vehicles may drive up. The guard changes in front of the Palace every day at 11.55.

The landmarks sit within a few minutes' walk: the Romanesque-Byzantine cathedral with the princely tombs, the Chapelle de la Miséricorde of 1639, the Oceanographic Museum founded by Albert I and opened in 1910 on the cliff edge, the Jardins Saint-Martin along the southern ramparts, and Fort Antoine of the early eighteenth century, now an open-air theatre at the tip of the Rock.