Day eight of our Windstar Mediterranean cruise brought us to Monte Carlo. We left the ship early for the Èze and Villa Rothschild excursion, with barely a clue what the day held. Our guide and driver met us on the pier, with a small group of just six couples.
Heading out of Monte Carlo and into France, we learned the whole principality is only about half the size of Central Park. Our guide explained that Èze, our first stop, was a small medieval town on a hilltop just past the border.
🏰 Medieval Èze: The Eagle’s Nest
Èze sits on a rocky base 1,407 feet above the sea, which earned it the nickname the “Eagle’s Nest.” People have been living up on that rock since around 2000 BC, and Greek and Phoenician artifacts have turned up there over the years. It changed hands constantly through the Middle Ages, until King Louis XIV demolished the castle, leaving ruins where a fortress once stood.
Today, it’s a pedestrian-only village home to over 2,000 residents, though you’d never guess it from the quiet streets. Small shops, art galleries, and restaurants lined our climb in the many small alleys and corners of the village. At one point we were passed by wait staff hauling a food delivery up the hill, including one poor guy wrestling a three-foot tuna.
Our guide pointed out how the stonework changes as you climb: rounded, rough-cut stone with no mortar near the bottom, giving way to squared, mortared stone higher up, centuries of building layered right on top of each other. The real showstopper, though, was the Jardin Exotique, a cactus and succulent garden woven right into the ruins near the summit. The combination of spiky greens and the azure sea below was breathtaking, and I took a few dozen pictures to prove it.
Bob and I spent about twenty minutes at the top before it became more crowded, so we headed back down through the narrow alleys, stopping for souvenirs and a quick refreshment. We’ve seen plenty of medieval villages over the years, but none as dramatic as this one. On the way out, we spotted a two-Michelin-star restaurant just below the village, with what must be a spectacular view.
🌸 Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild: A Wonderland of the Imagination
Our next stop topped even Èze. It’s on Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, the narrowest stretch of the Cap Ferrat peninsula, about twenty minutes away. Our bus struggled a bit on the narrow roads getting us to the entrance, but we made it, then walked up a long driveway with jaw-dropping views of yachts anchored below and large luxury homes perched right above the water. Our guide handled the tickets, and we stepped into a beautiful, slightly worn pink villa with almost two hours to explore, which it turned out was needed to fully explore the house and the multiple gardens.
A Little Villa History
Baroness Béatrice de Rothschild bought this windswept seven-hectare plot in 1905, reportedly outbidding Belgium’s King Léopold II for it. The villa went up between 1907 and 1912, blending Italian Renaissance and Venetian style, its pink façade a nod to Béatrice’s favorite color. It’s large, but not overwhelming. She designed the formal garden out front to feel like the deck of a ship with the sea visible on both sides. Standing upstairs looking out, I totally got the concept.
The real magic is in the nine themed gardens: French, Spanish, Florentine, stone, Japanese, exotic, Provençal, and rose, each meant to feel like its own corner of the world. I’ve toured plenty of palace gardens in Europe, but these felt more intimate and beautiful. The hidden gems kept me exploring all the nooks and crannies. Past the manicured French garden and its central water feature, hidden paths lead to a marble gazebo overlooking the water. From there, I explored the other eight gardens wandering through various nooks and paths. I lost Bob entirely at one point, just wandering.
Inside, the rooms are filled with Béatrice’s collections: 18th-century paintings, furniture, sculpture, Sèvres porcelain, even a tropical bird room and a monkey room for the animal lover in her. Every room has those huge windows framing the water below, keeping that yacht-sailing-the-sea feeling going. I have to say, I enjoyed this more than Versailles, although Versailles is more spectacular in size and content.
Béatrice died of tuberculosis in 1934 and left the whole estate to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which has clearly cared for it well. It draws over 130,000 visitors a year now, and having seen it, I get why.
⚓ Monaco-Ville: The Rock
After a bit of downtime back on the ship, I set out to explore Monaco-Ville: the Oceanographic Museum, the Prince’s Palace, and the Cathedral, all clustered around the harbor and connected by a beautiful seawall walk.
🐠 Oceanographic Museum
A combo ticket got me into both the museum and the palace, though the museum’s grand façade had me thinking I was already at the palace. Downstairs on the -2 level, I found a stunning run of aquariums, including a three-story tank packed with coral and fish, and lost forty minutes there without noticing.
Back upstairs, a large entryway pulled me into two imaginative exhibits. The first was a two-story virtual reality dive to the sea floor just outside Monaco’s bays, following a fictional crew checking on marine conservation efforts, fifteen minutes and genuinely extraordinary.
Across the hall, a ship’s-hull-shaped exhibit told the story of founder Prince Albert I, the “Sailor Prince,” whose own 28 ocean expeditions stocked much of the original collection. The building itself took eleven years to build starting in 1891, tucked into the cliff 279 feet above the sea. There was also a section on Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who ran the place for years. All told: roughly 90 tanks, thousands of specimens, a shark lagoon, and the open-air Sea Turtle Odyssey.
⛪ Monaco Cathedral
From the museum, the Prince’s Palace was just a half mile up the seawall, but Monaco Cathedral got in the way first, in the best sense. It happened to be open, so I ducked in.
This is the royal family’s church: site of Prince Rainier III and Grace Kelly’s famous 1956 wedding, their final resting place, and where Albert II later married Charlene Wittstock. Inside, I liked the restraint: modest side altars, towering columns, a royal purple carpet down the center aisle, and a beautiful mosaic of the Virgin Mary above the high altar. Compared to the ornate excess you find in a lot of Roman and Spanish churches, this felt refreshingly simple.
👑 The Prince’s Palace
I almost walked past the Palace, its modest size doesn’t scream royal residence. After circling to the wrong side first, I found the entrance, arriving just thirty minutes before closing. I moved fast, free audio guide in hand.
The history explains the look of the place: a Genoese fortress from 1215, seized by the Grimaldis in 1297 when an ancestor, François Grimaldi, supposedly talked his way in dressed as a monk with soldiers hiding behind him. That’s the origin of the family motto, “Deo Juvante” (“with God’s help”), and the two sword-carrying monks on Monaco’s coat of arms. It stayed a working fortress for centuries, since the Grimaldis were small fry next to their neighbors, until Honoré I and Honoré II finally turned it into a real palace in the 1500s and 1600s. That’s likely why the stonework shifts from plain to polished as you move through: fortress versus finery.
The Throne Room came next, with the Prince’s throne and family portraits, but the real theme of the whole palace turned out to be the 1956 wedding. Photos of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly showed up in nearly every room, along with an entire room for her dress and shots of the couple departing on the royal yacht for their honeymoon. I remember my mother talking about that wedding when I was a kid; apparently it was every bit as big a story as Diana marrying Charles decades later.
Twenty minutes back along the seawalk and I was at the ship. If you’re ever in Monaco on a cruise, I suggest taking the time to see this area.
Note: We had been to the famous Monaco Casino on a previous trip and like most Americans were very disappointed by the quiet almost sombre atmosphere, so it was not on our list to see again this trip.
💬 Have you been to Monaco, or is it on your list? Drop us a comment below — we love talking travel.
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