Port de Fontvieille

As previously mentioned, there are four major districts of Monaco – we have Monte Carlo the glitzy one, Condamine the eating one, Old Monaco the old one (which you will walk through in a minute), and Fontvieille the aquatic one, which we will talk about in a minute

For the moment, you can see a couple of the major attractions within Fontvieille from this platform.

The cream coloured arches stretching up above the estates show where the Stade Louis is found – this is the sports stadium where Monaco plays football and rugby. It doesn’t look like a conventional sports stadium, which usually look modern, sleek, futuristic etc but rather, it is designed to look like a Greek sports arena, with the arches and the tiling work and the lawn. The whole of Fontvieille is supposed to look very traditional South European, although it was built very recently, around the 70s. Compared to Monte Carlo, where the buildings are all designed to stand out and look unique and new, Fontvieille is designed to blend into the landscape, with a lovely wash of Mediterranean colour, shape and architecture, as if it has always existed.

On the other side of Fontvieille you should see some big white tents – these are used for glamorous events throughout the year but especially in February when they host the Circus Festival, a prestigious event in which Monaco invites the best circus performers from all over the world to come and compete in one of the biggest circus festivals in the world. The event is televised and the royal family of Monaco comes down to watch. At the end of the event, the best group wins the Golden Clown award; which sounds like a joke but apparently yes, this is a real thing in the clown world. If you want to be a clown, you want to be a Golden one. Around the tents you can se plenty of greenery – these are the Monaco Rose Gardens, dedicated to Grace Kelly. They are filled with roses, sculptures and water fountains, and is a really relaxing, calming place to visit if you fancy a nice relaxed stroll through this new neighbourhood. The whole feel of Fontvieille is very different to Monte Carlo which is flashy and showy – by comparison, it feels much slower and more South European here in atmosphere, with everyone leisurely walking around and enjoying this side of Monaco. There is so much to do here – as well as these attractions we have a little zoo, a shopping mall, an antiques car museum, a naval museum, the Jardin Exotique botanical gardens with bus number 2 – all kinds of interesting pockets around each corner of Fontvieille.

However, the most interesting thing about Fontvieille is that this is the aquatic region. From the mountains, you can see where the start to slope down, ending in the rocky outcrop right at the end. From these rocks, the land curves around in a banana shape, which means that roughly everything left of the Stade Louis exists entirely on water – all f the buildings, people, yachts, motorbikes, tents, trees, gardens – everything is on this stilt and pontoon technology, which you can see if you look down where people are walking – there is nothing underneath them except water.

This form of construction is so far totally unique to Monaco – there is nowhere else in the world that has an entire functioning neighbourhood that exists like this. China and Japan are starting to build out onto the water, as is South Korea which has recently invested lots more money into this type of technology. For anyone that has visited Amsterdam, you may have seen the canal boats where there are already villages that exist on the water but on boats, not as a whole stable district. Dubai is the only other territory which is also significantly building on water, as it is small and rich just like Monaco, although this is more like island technology, again not quite the same as Fontvieille.

Due to climate change, the ocean levels are rising (this is not a political statement, simply an objective fact), which means that within the next 30 years around 60% of humans will be deeply affected one way or another. Either we move into the mainland which will be even hotter, or we develop technology that allows us to utilise the watery space that we are now creating, embracing this expanse rather than shying away from it. Monaco has already made its decision, and is now globally at the forefront of this new technology, pushing boundaries with regards to what humans can accomplish and how life will look decades from now.

Also in front of this neighbourhood is the Port Fontvieille – the small cousin to Port Hercules. It is not deepwater, so therefore cannot hold the big luxury yachts, only the small ones. Bit of an embarrassment to leave your yacht here, I personally would never do that but hey.