Guide of Monaco

Presentation of Monaco

Monaco, officially the Principality of Monaco is a small sovereign city-state located in South Western Europe on the northern central coast of the Mediterranean Sea, having a land border on three sides only with France, and being about 16 km (9.9 mi) away from Italy. Its size is just under 2 km². Monaco is the world's most densely populated sovereign country, and the world's smallest French-speaking country. An average person takes only 56 minutes to walk across the width of the country. Monaco is the name of the country as well as the name of its capital city. It is often regarded as a tax haven, and many of its inhabitants are wealthy and from foreign countries, making up a majority of the population.

Monaco is a constitutional monarchy and principality, with Prince Albert II as head of state. The House of Grimaldi has ruled Monaco since 1297, and the state's sovereignty was officially recognized by the Franco-Monegasque Treaty of 1861.
 

 

HISTORY OF MONACO

Monaco's name comes from the nearby Phocaean Greek colony, in the 6th century, which referred to the Ligurians as Monoikos, which bears the sense of a people either settled in a "single habitation" or of "living apart" from others. According to an ancient myth, Hercules passed through the Monaco area and turned away the previous gods. As a result, a temple was constructed there, the temple of Hercules Monoikos. Because the only temple of this area was the "House" of Hercules, the city was called Monoikos.

 
Following a land grant from Emperor Henry VI in 1191, Monaco was re-founded in 1228 as a colony of Genoa. Monaco has been ruled by the House of Grimaldi since 1297, when Francesco Grimaldi ("Il Malizia", translated from Italian either as "The Malicious One" or "The Cunning One") and his men captured the fortress protecting the Rock of Monaco while he was dressed as a Franciscan monk.

 

See the full history of Monaco on Wikipedia