Monaco Train Station

Monaco is the 2nd smallest country in world after Vatican city; it is a microstate, the official definition meaning a very small country; composed of only one city. Our other European microstates are Andorra, Lichtenstein, Malta and San Marino.

For anyone that has been to Central Park in New York before, you can fit almost two Monacos into Central Park – this is the scale of the dimensions we are working with today.

Look at the pink building just behind the train station – this is not in Monaco, this is in France, in a lovely little town called Beausoleil, right on the border with this country.

Monaco is bordered entirely by France – to the West, North, East. This means they have a real problem with building space – they want to expand their territory but they are geographically limited. So which way do they expand? Not up, not in the American way, but out into the Mediterranean Sea.

Monaco is currently one of the only countries rich enough to start building on water – we will see this as we walk round, both the areas under construction and the finished product.

As I say, one of the only countries rich enough to begin this form of construction. Monaco has one of the highest GDP per capita in the world, where economists estimate that around two trillion euros are sitting untaxed in Monaco banks. Without insulting anyone’s intelligence, you can’t even imagine how big that number is. And it is all untaxed – Monaco is a tax haven, which means that income and property and not taxed, making this already lovely country even more attractive to the millionaires of the world. Around 1 in 3 people walking around Monaco are millionaires – if you want to find a rich friend or a rich partner, now is your time to shine. This is your moment.

Instead of tax, Monaco makes a significant portion of its money through other aspects, notably tourism, real estate and yachts, all of which we will see on the tour today. The crown jewel of Monaco is the Monte Carlo Casino, where we will head first, to see where Monaco’s financial success all began.