Luxury villa Montecarlo

History Starts with a Stinker
Seven hundred years ago, in 1297, an ambitious member of Genoa's Guelph party, Francesco Grimaldi the Spiteful,dressed up like a friar and knocked at the door of the Ghibelline fortress at Monaco, askingfor hospitality.The soldiers sleepily admitted him, whereuponthe phoney friar pulled a knifefrom his robe, killed the<br />
soldiers and let in his men.Although Francesco was the first Grimaldi to get info Monaco,the family became lords of their rock only whenthey purchased itfrom Genoa in 1308.<br />
Oncethey were rulersof a mini-empire includingAntibes and Menton;todaytheGrimaldis'sovereign Ruritania has been reduced bytheambitionsof otherstoasea-huggingig4hectares (slightly largerthan half of Central Park) under the looming mountain,Tete de Chien. Here Rainier III presides asthe living representativeof the oldest ruling family in Europe,and Europe's last consitutional autocrat.
For centuries the Grimaldis' main income carne from a tax levied on Menton's lemons and olives, and when Menton revolted in 1848 theyfaced bankruptcy; Monaco was the poorest state in ali Europe. In desperation, Prince Charles III looked for inspiration to the Duke ofBaden-Baden.whose casino lured Europe's big-spending aristocrats every summer. Monaco, Charles decided, would be the winter Baden-Baden, and he founded the Societa des Bains de Mer (SBM) to operate a casino and tourist industry, with the principality asthe chief share holder.The casino was built on a rock which the prince named Monte-Carlo after himself, and he hired Francois Blanc, the talented French manager of the Homburg Baden casino, to create a gambling city to order, 10 per cent of ali profits going to the crown. Blanc was one of the most successful financiers of the day and he proved his worth. He loaned the French government nearly 5 million francs for the completion of Napoleon lll's centrepiece, the Paris Opera, and in return assured that the French built a new railway from Nice in 1868. With transport to bring in the punters,the money poured in by the bushel; in 1870 the coffers were so full that Charles abolished direct taxation in Monaco, a state of affairs that endures to this day.<br />
But gone are those fond days when the Monegasques could live entirely off the folly of others. France and Italy legalized gaming in 1933, ending the principality's monopoly, and the proportion of its revenue that Monaco gleans from the tables has declined from 95 per cent to a mere 4 per cent. In the dark, bankrupt 1950S, Rainier III gave his little realm a fairytale cachet by wedding a luminous American film actress named Grace Kelly, bringing in a much-needed injection of socialites and theirfat bankrolls. Sincethen, the princeand theomnipresent SBMfound new ways to keep Monaco's residentsfrom paying income tax.especially in'offshore' banking (some 50 banks do business here), in the media (Tele and Radio Monte-Carlo), in 'business tourism' (there's a new, ultra-modem congress hall) and tourism, with no little interest fuelled by the media's scrutiny of the sadly tarnished fairytale lives of Princesses Caroline and Stephanie. He was succeeded in 2005 by his son, Albert II whose current lackof a legitimate heir is causefor Constant media speculation.