Is Monaco / Monte Carlo Boring?

I wouldn't mind being there. It wouldn't bore me.

A sunny place for shady people

Only a very little part of it (like the Casino in OP's photo) is historic, and the rest is wildly overbuilt with ugly modern condos and hotels, so though it's spectacularly situated, there's not much to see. About all there is to do is shop (which you can do with abandon, since it caters to the wealthy).

What do residents do all day? Obviously if one is young, traveling and such, but once you’re older that’s quite tiring.

r4: They shop, they go out on their yachts, they drive out to the prettier nearby towns and beaches, they see the shows in St. Tropez. A lot of them go on their yachts and fuck their yacht girls, or stay in their condos and fuck their escorts.

I was there for a day trip from Nice years ago. I thought it was stunning. And, yes, totally boring. A couple hours was enough.

(Nice, however was heaven on earth. I did ecstasy and got fucked by two men - one French daddy and one Italian stud - in one night.)

Oui. Except one thing: the train station “inside the hillside” is pretty cool.

Carved into the hillside…

My sis has a beautiful apartment there. Visits mostly for social reasons/occasions. I think Shirley Bassey lives there full time. Lots of rich folks.

OP- I am familiar with this Monaco

Isn't it easy to cross into France? If so, then presumably you just drive to somewhere in France that offers whatever you can't find/don't want in Monaco.

Is it the size of Manhattan? Bigger? Smaller?

What?

It’s the size of Central Park in Manhattan.

SERIOUSLY??

[italic]Lock ‘em up!

I know it well but my time was 20 years ago. If you have professional dealings with the monied class it's not dull, it's a city doing a lot of brisk business. Yes much of it a bit shady. It has a nice climate. Its great from Christmas through summer. There is a "season" of culture in the fall but its pretty geriatric, pretentious, considering its B list at best, except for the ballet. The opera is average. If you or your friends or business partners are rich enough you'll take a helicopter into the French alps to ski, often to the very glamorous Courchevel. It's a sensation when the weather is balmy in Monaco but you can ski in the Alps. Nice has culture. Italy too but Genoa, Turino and Milano are kind of far away.

Geriatric is about right. They are trying to attract young rich people like 'influencers' now.

In Hitchcock's REBECCA, it appears that Monte Carlo was the Las Vegas of Europe in the early 20th century. Why/how did it lose its status among young people?

It was a victim of its own success. When it started under Prince Rainier's reign catering very aggressively to the very wealthy who moved there for the tax breaks, they wanted ever larger and glitzier and more modern places to live, and so it became overcrowded and tacky. The young stopped coming unless they wanted to work there (either as servants or as escorts).

Several of the other great European vacation spots of the late 19th century did not become so tacky because they were not so desperate to attract wealthy residents, so other seaside places like Biarritz and Cabourg have retained more of their picturesque turn-of-the-century charm.

R12 according the interwebs it's .78 square miles in total

It's tiny.

My favorite factoid about Monaco is that Monegasque citizens aren't allowed to gamble. So smart!

It's a very controlled place with a lot of surveillance and high security.

Are the escorts expensive?

How much?

R20 Monaco has a population of only 39,000. That's about the same population of my hometown in central Massachusetts.

“Most girls would give their eyes to see Monte!!”

There are escorts and yacht girls, but not so many nor so many so fabulous as the ones as in Dubai. There, gazillionaires can find somebody really spectacular to be their toilet... er, i mean their bedmate.

Like Hohan /jk

I went on a three day work jolly to the Grand Prix around 2011-ish. Monaco is an interesting anomaly, but I don’t feel the need to ever go back. It’s a bit soulless in character. You can see all the ‘sights’ by foot within a few hours (Casino, changing of the guard, etc). It’s hilly, and what sticks with me more than anything were the public defibrillators seemingly everywhere like phone booths. I also saw Boris Becker mingling at a crowded yacht party from a restaurant overlooking the harbour. The Grand Prix, by the way, was much more entertaining and casual than I expected. It didn’t convert me to an F1 fan, but it’s night and day from NASCAR, lol. If you happen to be in Nice or nearby, maybe check out Monaco for a day trip. It’s a European ‘micro state’ you can tick off your list. I’ve also been to Andorra, Vatican City, and Liechtenstein. Only San Marino to go!

[QUOTE]It's a very controlled place with a lot of surveillance and high security.

I read a Vanity Fair article about the Grimaldis that focused on the sisters' relationships and sex lives. The writer was warned that all hotel phones were tapped and monitored. This was while Rainier was still alive pre-cell phones.

Public defibrillators, r27? I'm confused. Members of the public could use them if a person on the street had heart failure? Without training?

In Monaco all seems to breathe freedom and peace and to make one forget the world and its sad troubles.

Turmoils, dammit.

r28 - apparently enough of the public is trained

Agree with everything already posted. Plus in summer it’s hot and heaving with coach loads of day trippers from the Mediterranean cruise ships: avoid then. In early spring it can be delightful - morning coffee on a sunny terrace overlooking the sea then drive up to ski in the alps in the afternoon. The aforementioned train station takes you west along the coastal route to Antibes, Nice, Cannes, Juan Les Pins for lunch and a trip around the galleries. The train route east gets you into Italy in no time for the markets, shopping and restaurants. . It’s very safe with dense security camera coverage plus the palace’s easy on the eye chocolate box soldiers are about and present their haughty glamour at every opportunity. I stayed for a time in a beautiful belle epoque villa overlooking the marina but it has since been surrounded and lost its views to the rising overdevelopment of apartments for the absent rich.

Thanks, r31. Wow, that's impressive. Seems prudent with an aging population.

I think a lot of people still think of this scene and the prophetic line Grace Kelly uttered as she unknowingly viewed her future life and death...

“Have you ever seen any place in the world more beautiful?”

This article is more about the business of yachts, but there’s a lot of interesting background about life and work in Monaco. If you are interested…

oh, the horrors of capitalism.. I as a true person of valor and integrity would rather slum it in a third world country, where the people are real and earnest, and all is light and pure.

It's like Gibraltar in that they can only build upwards.

Not my sort of place.

If you go, be sure to check out the oceanarium.

Watch this:

I didn’t spend long there, but it was long enough. I think it’s a kind of unknowable place. It’s overrun with tourists or citizens-of-the-world types who have chosen it as a convenient place to park their money. There is lots of conspicuous wealth in the form of cars, designer clothing and jewels, but the population seemed fairly listless to me. It seemed almost Swiss in the way that everything seemed fairly pristine and worked like clockwork. However, it’s prosperity seemed fairly disreputable too: there were lots of old men with dolled-up young Barbie wives, and quite a few young men who looked like they would cut your throat if they could make a buck by doing so.

I was there around the time of the Grand Prix. The place was being set up for it, and I would have loved to have stayed for that. It seemed to be routed right past the apartment buildings.

The place was way too built up for me. A pretty town centre, but surrounded by modern developments, right into the water. What’s the point of having squillions of pounds in the bank if you have to live in a charmless block of flats?

It would be worth it to me just going to the beach where Cary Grant and Grace Kelly first saw each other in To Catch A Thief. (Great location shot sequence) The same hotel is still there, too.

Spent a day there decades ago. The streets were like narrow canyons with high rise flats on either side. The shops at ground level are floor to ceiling plate glass windows, everything so tastefully arranged but same-same, it gets boring fast.

The interesting thing was Monaco was so tiny that you could see the exact perimeter as defined by the high rises, then boom, just countryside, no suburban spread petering out.

@r34, “Have you ever seen any place in the world more beautiful?”

She said as she tumbled a 120 feet down to her death from almost that exact spot 😳

When will Wes Anderson make a terrible movie set there?

With Owen Wilson as Principe Alberto, Sershuh Ronan as Principessa Stefania, and Tilda Swinton as their mother Bette Davis.

[quote]I suppose they import all their whores

And then sometimes we marry them.

^ That's what I like about you, Rainy, nothing but the best for the Pirates Grimaldi

[quote]The aforementioned train station takes you west along the coastal route to Antibes, Nice, Cannes, Juan Les Pins for lunch and a trip around the galleries.

The question, then, is why one would stay in Monaco instead of in one of those cities.

[quote]there were lots of old men with dolled-up young Barbie wives

And that's a bad thing because ...?

I go there sometimes when on the riviera, for a short visit. The gardens are beautiful, and the museum is worth visiting. 3h max for both. It's TINY. it's really very small; I don't think it's anywhere near as big as central park even.and there's nothing to do. Shopping ? where ? the antique shops were tired 50 years ago, and you can find the same luxury items anywhere in Cannes, or Nice. Saint-Paul- de -Vence is much nicer.

[quote]Nice, however was heaven on earth. I did ecstasy and got fucked by two men - one French daddy and one Italian stud - in one night.)

2 men in one night ? what are you a buddhist monk ? there a place in Nice called "the morgan", where you have to take off all your clothes (except for shoes) in the entryway, even before entering the bar area, and then anything goes. everywhere. You can even suck a rank of guys still holding their drink, and get fucked on the sofa in front of them all ! more like , two men, one French daddy and one Italian stud in the first five minutes. And you dare call yourself a whore ? I spent a couple of nights there (at the morgan), got fucked by approx 145 men minimum, and proudly tested poz for the syph back home

You sleep in Monaco to avoid income tax. You eat, drink and play on the Côte d’Azur to spend the money on which you avoided income tax.

R19, my first encounter with the name Biarritz was in Louise Fitzhugh's sequel to Harriet the Spy, The Long Secret. Beth Ellen Hansen's crazy mother is "always off in Biarritz." At the age of 8, I thought Biarritz was some kind of loony bin.

Being a hyped-up destination for Ridge, Taylor and Steffy, of COURSE Monaco is boring. (Also, who goes to Monaco to get over the loss of their dead-but-not-really-killed-by-his-mother husband? I can't imagine what passes for therapy in Monaco.)

[quote] My favorite factoid about Monaco is that Monegasque citizens aren't allowed to gamble. So smart!

The same is true of South Korea. You have to show a passport to get into the casino in Seoul-- or at least you did 20 years ago. It is full of incredibly shady rich Chinese people and Japanese gangsters.

Monaco's casino is popular with East Asians these days as well.

All casinos are popular with East Asians.

This song was apparently written about R50's place.

Prince Rainier and his advisors were very keen on getting a movie star in as princess, to gain publicity and tourism. Before Ranier met Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe was approached.

What a mess THAT could have been!

R52 Same here, I read The Long Secret when I was about 10. Besides Biarritz, I had never heard of Mykonos, Water Mill, or Montauk!

R12, Monaco is smaller than Central Park. It amazes me how a tinpot principality has somehow managed to survive into the 21st century. It had been absorbed by Spain, Sardinia, France over the years, and yet here we are. It did lose 95% of its territory to France though when France annexed Menton and Roquebrune.

[quote]Prince Rainier and his advisors were very keen on getting a movie star in as princess, to gain publicity and tourism

My English grandmother used to say, "America has no monarchy, so they created the film star."

It sounds like a glamorous place to Americans who’ve never traveled but who’ve vaguely heard of Grace Kelly.

Dubai will never be anything other than ridiculous and a bit menacing.

R52, I had to check the date of your comment because I wasn’t sure if I had written it! It’s a whole other experience to re-read that book as a middle-aged person. Still excellent.

I spent a day in Monaco and found it a bit sinister.

@r52, " my first encounter with the name Biarritz was in Louise Fitzhugh's sequel to Harriet the Spy"

🤔 Mine was with Cadillac the car...

Monaco is so nouveau riche. The well-to-do prefer less-flashier places like Cascais.

R43, are you serious? She actually died at that spot?

^ Yes, according to reports she was on that road and it's not a very long road

I’m Dr. Monica DeMonico, the neurosurgeon assigned to this case.

R66, Princess Grace died at Monaco Hospital. The road she was driving on when she plunged down the mountainside was Rte de la Turbie in Cap-d'Ail, FR, southwest of Monaco. The picnic scene in To Catch a Thief was on Rte de Beausoleil in Beausoleil, FR, just above Monaco.

The hotel and beach/swimming scene from To Catch a Thief is in Cannes. They did a day trips to Monaco with the convertible and the pique-nique.

The Prince Grimaldi, Charles III (Carlo III), ceded Roquebrune and Menton to France in exchange for 4 million francs and France's assurance that they would protect Monaco's sovereignty. This little history of a Greater Monaco was commemorated in a 1997 anniversary stamp.

Does the train line end in Monaco or can you ride it into Italy?

Monaco's population is about 40,000 with about 10,000 of that being Monegesque citizens. It must get pretty boring fast. You see the same old type of faces and things to do. A lot of those people don't even live there full time but only part time for the tax benefits.

Do they still have a problem with being overrun by Russians and other sleazy Eastern Europeans? It was getting to be quite a problem. Of course, now they have to deal with Chinese who are possibly even worse.

It’s a super-clean version of France. It’s cramped and full of tourists.

R73, that 40,000 crammed into 0.78 sq mi makes it the densest country in the world. I'd imagine though that most of those 40,000 don't actually live there year round but say they do to avoid taxes.

Yers, the train goes past Menton and into Italy.

^Thanks bébé.

If by boring you mean a resort for 65+ then yes.