The quarter everyone means when they say Monaco: the Casino, the Opera, the Hôtel de Paris and the Hermitage around one square, with the Jardins des Boulingrins below. Stay here for the address and for being able to walk everywhere worth walking to.
Monte-Carlo is not the old part of Monaco — it is the newest and most deliberate. In 1863 the Société des Bains de Mer was granted a gambling monopoly and set about building an entire resort quarter on what was then an empty headland called the Plateau des Spélugues. Charles Garnier, who designed the Paris Opera, built the Casino’s concert hall. The Hôtel de Paris opened the following year. The whole thing was named after the reigning prince, Charles III.
The result is the densest concentration of grandeur on the Mediterranean: the Casino, the Opéra, the Hôtel de Paris and the Hôtel Hermitage all within a two-minute walk of one square, with the terraced Jardins des Boulingrins dropping away below and the Café de Paris on the corner. It is genuinely beautiful at dusk, and genuinely crowded at midday.
Staying here costs the most and buys the most: you can have an aperitif at the Café de Paris, dinner at Le Louis XV, a look around the Casino’s Salle Blanche and a nightcap at the Hermitage’s bar without ever getting into a car. If that is the trip you came for, nowhere else in Monaco competes.
Monaco’s public lifts and escalators — around 80 of them — do most of the climbing between quarters, and they are free. Bus lines 1, 2 and 6 connect the whole country for a couple of euros, and nothing on this site is more than a twenty-minute walk from anything else. Full detail in the Monaco travel guide.
Palace hotel ★★★★★
The address that invented Monte-Carlo. Opened in 1864 opposite the Casino, reopened in 2018 after a four-year, ground-up restoration that added a central patio and a top-floor suite with its own pool.
Belle Époque palace ★★★★★
The romantic one. A pink-and-cream Belle Époque palace a minute from the Casino, built around a Winter Garden whose glass dome is attributed to Gustave Eiffel’s workshop.
Independent luxury hotel ★★★★★
The design-led alternative to the SBM palaces: Jacques Garcia interiors, a Karl Lagerfeld-designed pool deck, and a Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant, on the garden side of the Casino.
Grand hotel ★★★★
Built out over the sea on the Grand Prix circuit’s most famous corner. The rooftop pool looks down on the Fairmont Hairpin, which makes race week here unlike anywhere else.
The Rock and the old town
The original Monaco, on a limestone headland 60 metres above the sea — the Prince’s Palace, the cathedral, the Oceanographic Museum and a knot of lanes that empty out completely after the day-trippers leave.
Yachts, the market, the circuit
The working heart of the country: the deep-water harbour where the superyachts moor, the Condamine market where residents actually shop, and the quays that become the Grand Prix’s fastest section each May.
Search Monaco hotels on Trip.com
Affiliate widget: we earn a commission on bookings, at no extra cost to you.