Monaco
Monaco Culture & Language
Culture
Monaco’s cultural institutions are older and more serious than its reputation as a tax haven suggests, and several of them were deliberately built to give the place something beyond the casino.
The Ballets Russes
Sergei Diaghilev based his company in Monte-Carlo, and after his death the successor companies kept it as a home. Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo today is a company of international standing, and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in the Salle Garnier — built by the architect of the Paris opera house — premiered works by Massenet, Puccini and Ravel.
The sea as a discipline
Prince Albert I was a working oceanographer who ran research expeditions for decades and built the Oceanographic Museum into the cliff in 1910 to house what he found. Jacques Cousteau directed it from 1957 to 1988. The principality’s marine conservation work descends directly from that and is not a public relations exercise.
Monégasque language and food
The dialect survives in street signs, school lessons and the national anthem. The cooking is Ligurian rather than French: barbagiuan, a fried pastry of chard and ricotta, socca made from chickpea flour, and fougasse, a sweet bread with nuts and aniseed.
Motor racing
The Grand Prix has run since 1929 on a circuit that is simply the town with barriers on it, and the Monte-Carlo Rally since 1911. Both are part of the national self-image.
The saints’ calendar
Sainte Dévote on 27 January, when a boat is burned on the harbour front, and the national day on 19 November are the two dates when Monaco is most itself.
Language Basics
French is the official language and is what everyone speaks and everything is written in. English is very widely spoken — in hotels, restaurants, shops and banks — and Italian is common given the border twenty minutes away.
Monégasque is the traditional language: a Ligurian dialect closer to Genoese than to French, which had almost disappeared by the mid-twentieth century and was made a compulsory school subject to save it. Street signs in Monaco-Ville carry both French and Monégasque names.
A visitor needs French or English and nothing else. The usual French courtesies apply and matter: bonjour on entering a shop, merci, au revoir on leaving. Beginning in English without a French greeting first is noticed here as it is across France.