European Kingdoms

Monaco (Western Europe)

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Monaco is a very small, independent European principality which is located along the French Riviera. It lies close to the French border with Italy, being surrounded on three sides by France and on its eastern flank by the Mediterranean. The modern principality of Monaco consists of only two hundred and two hectares of land and had a 2021 population of 36,686.

The principality is famous for its gambling freedoms, especially the Monte Carlo casino, and as a pleasure-seeking destination for the rich and famous (its highly generous tax regulations help a great deal in this regard). When its prince, Rainier III, married the glamorous American actress, Grace Kelly, in 1956 this pocket state became world-famous.

Evidence of settlement in the area has been found in a cave on the 'Rock of Monaco', the principality's oldest part. That evidence provides a date of about 400,000 BC, well before anatomically-modern humans existed, let alone had even entered Europe (see feature link). These humans would mostly likely have been late Homo Heidelbergensis or early Homo Neanderthalis.

The first permanent inhabitants were Ligurians who migrated into the area when they first penetrated what would become Provence and Liguria. Ligurian spread eventually encompassed the Mediterranean coast from today's Liguria to the north-eastern corner of Iberia. The Romans later described Ligurians as hard-working and frugal. In the sixth century BC Phocaeans from Massalia (modern Marseille) founded a city at Monaco, naming it Monoikos.

Roman controls took many wars to be fully asserted. The Tropaeum Alpium ('Trophy of the Alps') stands majestically in the commune of La Turbie on the French Riviera to mark Rome's eventual victory over the Ligurian and Alpine tribes at the end of the first century BC. Following that, the area became part of the province of the Maritime Alps.

Barbarian tribes ravaged the region as the later Roman empire faded, largely depopulating areas of it. Some North African control was driven out by AD 975, and European settlers again moved in. Land which would become Monaco was acquired by the republic of Genoa in 1191. The early lordship of Monaco began during this Genoese colonial period, in 1215, but the Genoese Grimaldi family seized that colony in 1297.

They were out of favour at the time, so their seizure of Monaco was far from being a Genoese-sanctioned move. They have governed it ever since, barring a few breaks, making them Europe's longest-serving dynasty. From 1612 they used the title 'sovereign prince' to underline their independence. Until the 1800s they also held the lordships of Menton and Roquebrune.

(Information by John De Cleene and the John De Cleene Archive, with additional information from Hammond's Historical Atlas (C S Hammond & Co, 1963), from Historical Atlas of the World, R R Palmer (Ed, Rand McNally & Company, 1963), from National Geographic (May 1996), from Oxford Atlas of World History, Patrick K O'Brien (Ed, Oxford University Press, 1999), from Washington Post (16 November 1996), and from External Links: Hello Monaco, and Monaco (Flags of the World), and Monaco, (Heraldica.org), and Monaco (Rulers.org), and Monaco (Monaco.mc, no longer online but available via the Internet Archive), and Provence & Beyond, and Monaco (World Statesmen).)