Starred tables, beaches, the Rock at dawn and insider secrets: my guide to a luxury weekend in Monaco, where detail matters more than anywhere else.
Monaco fits into two square kilometres, which ought to make it a simple destination. It’s the opposite: it’s probably the place on the Riviera where detail matters most, because everything is concentrated, codified and closely watched.
You don’t go to Monaco to lose yourself. You go to do things properly. Here’s how I have them done.
I. Tables & addresses
- The big night: Le Louis XV – Alain Ducasse, Les Ambassadeurs by Christophe Cussac, L’Abysse and Pavyllon by Yannick Alléno, Blue Bay and Elsa by Marcel Ravin. Monaco has the highest density of truly great tables per square kilometre in Europe, and that isn’t a sales line: it’s arithmetic.
- The safe bets, lunch and dinner: La Table d’Antonio Salvatore at Rampoldi, Yoshi, COYA Monte-Carlo, Amazónico Monte-Carlo, Sass’ Café. These are my most frequent bookings, and the ones that never disappoint on a first stay.
- Feet in the water: Le Deck, La Rose des Vents, La Note Bleue, Neptune Monaco Beach, Nikki Beach Monte Carlo, Maona Monte-Carlo, and La Vigie Zanoni for the view.
- After dark: Jimmy’z Monte-Carlo, the absolute institution; Buddha-Bar Monte-Carlo, Twiga, Selva and Club Amazónico, La Rascasse; and Amber Lounge during the Grand Prix, which is a category of its own.
II. Signature experiences
- The Rock at dawn: the old town, the lanes, the changing of the guard, before the tour groups arrive. After eleven it isn’t remotely the same experience, and I tell every client so.
- The Jardin Exotique and the heights, to understand the principality’s vertical geography, and because the view amply justifies the climb.
- A trip out to sea: Monaco is best seen from the water, and you’re a few miles from Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Èze-sur-Mer. Half a day is enough to change your perception of the place entirely.
- The spa and thalassotherapy, one of Monaco’s genuine strengths, and one of the rare places where you can spend a whole morning thinking about nothing.
- The opera, a ballet, a concert, the Monegasque cultural season is well above what the principality’s size suggests. It’s the suggestion my clients greet with the most scepticism and thank me for the most.
III. Insider secrets
- Monaco is vertical. What looks a hundred metres away on a map may be forty metres higher up. Public lifts connect the levels and change your life completely, nobody uses them on a first stay, everybody uses them on the second.
- The dress code in evening establishments is real, and it is enforced. This isn’t the relaxed Riviera: in Monaco you dress, and you don’t argue at the door.
- Parking is possible (the principality is riddled with public car parks) but driving at the end of the working day is tiresome. A chauffeur is simpler, and spares you the city’s only real irritation.
- The best tables book weeks ahead, and far more during the big events. The Grand Prix changes the rules entirely: I’ve written a separate article on it.
- Many of my clients stay in Monaco and dine outside it. Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, Èze and Roquebrune are fifteen or twenty minutes away and give you a breath of air the principality, by construction, cannot.
When to come
Spring and autumn are by far the best times: the light is beautiful, the heat stays bearable in a city of stone, and you can get the tables. Summer is hot and dense. May belongs to the Grand Prix, which is a week apart and is prepared as such. And in winter the principality has a calm few people know about, it’s my quiet season.
