Why Monaco is ditching old-school glam to court Gen Z
Bye bye Dubai. At Monaco’s newly opened Amazónico, a peacock-headdressed dancer flown in from Rio gyrated at my table like a carnival queen. My ‘amazonegroni’ cocktail laced with pineapple gin arrived in a porcelain jaguar skull. A billionaire puffed a €200 shisha packed with mango tobacco. The strangest thing? Monaco is supposedly the world’s most elderly nation (average age: 56). But I was the oldest guy in the room.
Amazónico has helped drown the Principality’s fusty, dusty reputation by luring Gen Z. Granted, there’s still a defibrillator on every corner. But have the dozen new establishments that opened in 2024 made Monaco a youthful escape for a city break?
My day started at Monaco’s pharaonic megaproject, Mareterra, which opened in December. This entirely new 15-acre neighbourhood was reclaimed from the seabed. It’s added 3 per cent to the nation’s landmass – the equivalent of tacking another Devon onto Britain. It’s almost entirely pedestrian, with EV chargers aplenty. As Mareterra’s new seaside promenade hovers above the Mediterranean, I can walk across the entire community in 55 minutes flat.
The new seafront zone was packed with billionaire strollers: tanned, young, statuesque and sockless, routinely draping jackets over their shoulders, as if life’s too short to stick your arms inside a sleeve. There were more dogs than you could throw a stick at – and in Monaco, the size of pooch is directly related to the size of your apartment. Carrying a Bichon Frisé under your Loro Piana jacket marks you out as a studio owner; walking a 100-pound Labrador proves you’re the big dawg.
But even the former need deep pockets to live in the 200ft-high Le Renzo tower, designed by architect Renzo Piano, which looms over Mareterra like a sticklebrick spaceship. Prices are purportedly £10,000 per square foot – bank on £50 million-plus for an apartment. In the surrounding shopfronts, visitors can buy a £100 million superyacht or a Boeing business jet. God help you if you’re seeking something as prosaic as a Boots meal deal.
From January 16, Monaco’s 2,800 resident Brits (including our own millennial hero Sir Lewis Hamilton) will be able to dine at Mareterra’s newest restaurant, Marlow. It’s a British-style brunch joint specialising in sausages and bacon. (To quote one-time local Somerset Maugham: “To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day”.)
Monaco has 79 lifts and 35 escalators; these are intended to whiz seniors around, but also allow me to glide from Mareterra to Casino Square, Monaco’s fanciest piazza, in mere seconds. I passed a YouTuber filming himself (repeatedly) alighting from a Bugatti Veyron.
It turns out that commissioning a starchitect to attract free-spending visitors is a Monaco institution. The Casino de Monte-Carlo was built in 1863 by Charles Garnier, who designed the Paris opera house, as Monaco’s traditional lemon-growing income dwindled.
The new casino printed money. Roulette was the upper class equivalent of bingo and the British aristocracy loved it. Le Train Bleu carried young London gamblers like Sir Winston Churchill direct from Calais to Monaco. When Vladimir Lenin called at the Casino de Monte-Carlo, he fumed that punters were waging money on a mere “game of chance”. Vlad, mate, that’s part of the fun.
I hiked downhill from the casino to Port Hercule. Reclaiming land from the sea is nothing new either, as Monaco’s main harbour was dredged up in 1914. It now hosts the key turns of Monaco’s Formula One circuit. TikTokers are welcome in the Principality. As are superyachts, which charter for around one million euros per week, when tips, gas and taxes are included. If I took my family on a week’s jolly, I’d return to Britain homeless.
Instead I took the solar-powered Bateau Bus ferry across the harbour. En route I saw a seagull eating a brioche aux raisins. It doesn’t get more Monaco than that.
I walked on to the residential zone of Fontvieille on the French border, where F1 drivers live. The suburb was also conjured up from the seabed in the 1970s. Here local police patrol on jetskis, speedboats and electric bikes. Monaco’s focus on safety means young, wealthy families are everywhere, smashing the Barbour and tiara stereotype.
But there are plenty of young singles, too, searching for their soulmates – and here, that means speed dating, Monaco style. At 6pm I grabbed a coloured wristband (flaming red means you’re single) and headed into Buddha Bar, where generation-telephone were filming themselves under a 20ft-high gilded ceiling, nourished by sashimi and caipirinha. “We wanted to bring young people together,” manager Sandra told me over a thumping bassline. “Everybody is behind their screen now, so why not meet in real life?”
Back out on Casino Square, the Principality’s grande dame, Hôtel de Paris, stood like a billionaire’s wedding cake (appropriate, as it’s where Prince Rainier III met actress Grace Kelly; their wedding catapulting Monaco onto the celebrity stage). In the hotel’s rococo lobby, a flamboyant twenty-something Euro couple cuddled near a babyfaced American Netflix actress, while a gaggle of teenage Gulf royals scrolled through dinner.
Truly, the Principality is where 21st-century wealth comes to play – and now, it’s younger than ever.
Essentials
Tristan Rutherford travelled as a guest of Société des Bains de Mer.
Hôtel de Paris has rooms from £675 per night, room only. EasyJet has return flights to Nice from £48; from there, it’s a 23-minute train journey to Monte Carlo (€4.90/£4.27 each way), or a seven-minute helicopter flight, which will set you back around €200 (£166) per person.
