More than 800 young people descended on the Yacht Club de Monaco on Saturday 21st March for the first ever Yachting Student Fair — a new initiative designed to open up the maritime and yachting professions to a generation that, organisers say, remains largely unaware of the career opportunities the sector offers.
The fair formed the opening chapter of the inaugural Monaco, Capital of Advanced Yachting Rendezvous, a four-day event organised by the Yacht Club de Monaco in collaboration with The Explorers Club of New York. It was supported by Monaco’s Department of Education, Youth and Sports and Monaco City Hall.
Students from middle school through to graduate level moved between around 20 stands covering a wide range of maritime careers — from naval architecture and boat maintenance to port operations, underwater work, yachting management and brokerage. YCM’s La Belle Classe Academy presented its own training modules on service, sustainability and brokerage, and visitors were invited aboard yachts moored in the marina throughout the day.
Minister of State Christophe Mirmand attended and spoke of the fair’s potential to become a fixture in Monaco’s educational calendar. “This is a wonderful opportunity to discover that the vocations being presented can help build life paths,” he said. “I believe this is also the ambition of the event, which I hope will become an annual meeting to help achieve that objective.”
The Yachting Student Fair is the latest expression of YCM’s broader ambition under its ‘Monaco, Capital of Advanced Yachting’ initiative — to position the Principality not only as a destination for the world’s finest yachts, but as a centre for maritime education, innovation and ocean science.
Dominique Lory, Executive Chef of the HĂ´tel de Paris Monte-Carlo, has been awarded the Gault&Millau d’Or PACA and Monaco 2026 — the guide’s highest regional distinction — at a ceremony held at the HĂ´tel Negresco in Nice on Monday 30th March.
The award, presented during the Gault&Millau Tour Provence-Alpes-CĂ´te d’Azur–Monaco ceremony, is given each year to the chef who has most distinguished themselves from their peers across the region. It represents a step up for Lory, who received the guide’s Techniques d’Excellence trophy for the same region in 2024.
“Receiving the Gault&Millau d’Or award is an immense source of pride,” Lory said. “It reflects a shared passion, teamwork, and a daily commitment to creating emotion in every dish.”
“This gesture, very common in Europe to say goodbye but extremely rare in Japanese culture, touched me deeply and constitutes, in my view, a particularly strong token of appreciation for the work accomplished,” he says. “It was a moment that was well worth a year of intense effort to bring this project to fruition, and which demonstrates the full appeal of Monaco’s soft power, which I am constantly striving to develop in various fields.”
That soft power, in Biscay’s hands, takes several forms — manga being perhaps the most prominent.
A relationship built over years
Cedric Biscay first met Princess Akiko in November 2019 in Kyoto, during an official audience at his Magic Kyoto event. William Simpson, storyboard artist for Game of Thrones, drew a live portrait of the Princess at the gala dinner that followed, to her evident delight. The dinner was attended by the Mayor and Governor of Kyoto.
Princess Charlene was ultimately unable to attend Monaco Day at the Expo due to other commitments, but Prince Albert stepped in — meeting the young Japanese players on 28th June 2025, Monaco’s designated National Day at the expo.
Prince Albert II with Princess Charlene, Princess Caroline of Hanover and Princess Akiko. Photo credit: Michaël Alesi, Government Communications Department
The Monegasque authorities used the visit to invite the Princess to the celebrations marking 20 years of diplomatic relations between Monaco and Japan. Biscay also introduced her to Romain Ciarlet, Vice-President and CEO of the Prince Albert II Foundation, with a view to future collaborations between Monaco and Japan.
“These few days were extraordinary for me,” he says, singling out two moments in particular. The first was being present “in the front row of the Prince’s box at the Stade Louis-II, alongside the Imperial Princess — a gesture of kindness from Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene that I had not expected at all.” The second was the farewell outside the Rose Ball. “As I was escorting Her Imperial Highness Princess Akiko of Mikasa to her car, accompanied by her staff, the Chamberlain and the Ambassador, she kissed me on the cheeks.”
Now in its 11th volume, the series has sold more than 200,000 copies in France alone and is published in French, English, Japanese and Italian. Volume 11 is set almost entirely in Monaco — the Casino, the Hôtel de Paris, Alain Ducasse and Formula 1 driver Valtteri Bottas all appearing as characters.
“I’ve always believed Monaco is undervalued globally,” Biscay told Monaco Life in an earlier interview. “It’s famous for the Grand Prix and yachts — but there’s so much more here. I wanted to show that Monaco can also be a place of culture, creativity and inspiration. A lot of people think Monaco is inaccessible or too expensive. But now I get messages from parents saying their kids are asking to visit Monaco because of Blitz. If the manga can help bring new people here, especially young people, I’m very proud of that.”
The series has also moved beyond entertainment. A special edition produced in collaboration with Monaco’s Women’s Rights Committee addressed school bullying. “This kind of storytelling reaches kids in a way that flyers or conferences never could,” he says.
Biscay is also in the final stages of producing the long-awaited Astro Boy reboot with Mediawan and TF1, a project more than a decade in the making.
That soft power, as Biscay has come to define it, is less about spectacle and more about connection — the careful weaving together of people, ideas and cultures in ways that feel both natural and lasting. From manga panels to moments of shared sport, from formal meetings to spontaneous gestures, his work reveals a quieter, more human dimension of Monaco’s international presence. The farewell outside the Rose Ball did not just mark the end of a visit, but captured something more enduring: a relationship built on mutual respect, and a vision of cultural exchange that continues to unfold well beyond a single evening.
On 6 May 1955, an Irish photographer accompanied a Hollywood actress to the Prince’s Palace of Monaco for what Paris Match had conceived as little more than a society photo opportunity. What Edward Quinn captured that afternoon became some of the most significant images in Monaco’s history.
The Princess Grace Irish Library is marking the moment with an illustrated talk on Quinn’s life and work, taking place on Thursday 2nd April at 7pm. Tickets are priced at €10 and include a drink.
The man behind the lens
Quinn was born in Ireland in 1920 and made his way to London before eventually settling on the CĂ´te d’Azur, where he spent the 1950s photographing the celebrities, artists and industrialists who gravitated to the region during what he called the “Golden Fifties”. The French Riviera in that era was a confluence of money, glamour and creative talent, and Quinn positioned himself at its centre.
It was that access — and the trust he had already built with both Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III — that put him in the room on the afternoon their story began.
A meeting that almost didn’t happen
The encounter had been arranged by Paris Match journalist Pierre Galante, whose connection to Monaco’s sovereign made the introduction possible. Kelly visited the Prince’s Palace on the afternoon of 6 May 1955, arriving late after a small road accident along the way and a power cut at her Cannes hotel that had left her without the means to properly prepare.
When the two finally met, both seemed unexpectedly ill at ease. Quinn, sensing the tension, suggested they move outside into the palace gardens — ostensibly for better photographic light, but with the practical effect of breaking the ice. Prince Rainier agreed at once, and the atmosphere eased. Grace Kelly’s only remark on the drive back to Cannes, according to Quinn’s own account, was: “He is charming, charming.”
Seven months of correspondence followed. Prince Rainier sailed to the United States to propose to Kelly at Christmas 1955, and they married in Monaco on 19 April 1956.
Picasso and a career defined by proximity
Quinn’s relationship with Grace Kelly was one chapter in a longer career built on rare personal access to some of the 20th century’s defining figures. His friendship with Pablo Picasso began in 1951 and continued until the artist’s death in 1973, producing thousands of photographs and forming the basis of multiple published monographs on Picasso’s work.
The talk will be presented by Wolfgang Frei, Quinn’s nephew, who manages the photographer’s archive.
The Princess Grace Irish Library is located in Monaco. Directions are available at pgil.mc.
Monaco’s Princely Government has made two senior appointments across its economic development and housing portfolios, with changes taking effect across late March and mid-April.
The reshuffle spans two directorates that sit at the centre of Monaco’s domestic policy agenda — economic competitiveness and the Principality’s chronic housing pressures.
