Monaco has few beaches, and that’s precisely what makes the good addresses interesting. Those in the principality, those just outside, and which I choose for which kind of day.
Monaco isn’t a seaside destination, and that should be said up front. Two square kilometres of rock, a short coastline, and a main beach that is man-made. If you’ve come for sand, you’ve come to the wrong city: Pampelonne is two hours away.
But the scarcity is precisely what makes it interesting. The few waterside addresses in the principality and just outside it are polished, easy to reach, and offer something the great beaches don’t: you lunch with your feet in the water ten minutes from a starred dinner.
In the principality
- Le Deck: the safe bet for lunch at the water’s edge, in an elegant, unshowy register. It’s the one I book when someone asks for “something good, at midday, without complication”.
- La Note Bleue: more relaxed, on the Larvotto beach, with that chic guinguette feel families take to.
- Neptune Monaco Beach and Maona Monte-Carlo: two different seaside registers, one calmer, the other livelier depending on the hour.
- Nikki Beach Monte Carlo, the frankly festive address, with the brand’s usual mechanism: lunch building crescendo into a dancing afternoon.
- La Rose des Vents and La Vigie Zanoni, for the view, which here is the main argument.
Just outside, and often better
My least expected piece of advice: the finest waterside addresses in the area aren’t quite in Monaco. The Monte-Carlo Beach, technically in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in France, offers an olympic seawater pool facing the open sea and a setting unchanged since the thirties. It’s ten minutes from the Casino and it’s another world.
Heading west, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Èze-sur-Mer open onto coves and establishments most Monaco visitors never see. Fifteen to twenty minutes by car, and you leave the principality’s mineral world entirely.
How I choose
- The wind. The Monegasque coast faces east; an easterly makes some terraces unpleasant and leaves others entirely unaffected. I check the day before and switch if needed.
- The hour. As everywhere on the Riviera, the first seating at 12:30 is calm and the second, from 3:30, distinctly livelier in the festive addresses.
- Sunbeds are requested separately from lunch, and the row is negotiated when booking. That holds in Monaco as in Cannes.
- Access. Some addresses mean going down, and therefore back up. In a vertical city, with children or at 32 degrees, that needs thinking about beforehand.
- The season. In May, during the Grand Prix, part of the seafront is privatised or inaccessible. You need to know that before promising lunch with your feet in the water.
