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Month: September 2026

Prince Albert II buys Les Baux house to restore and pass to Prince Jacques

by: Cassandra Tanti
07/09/2026

Monaco is to buy and restore a historic house in Les Baux-de-Provence as a showcase for its Grimaldi Historic Sites, Prince Albert II has announced — a property he said would belong to the princes of Monaco and pass to Prince Jacques.

The Prince revealed the acquisition in his speech on the château esplanade, on the day his 11-year-old son, Prince Jacques, was symbolically handed the keys to the town and confirmed in his title of Marquis des Baux. “I am very happy to announce today the ongoing acquisition, from your commune, of a house in the village: the house known as the Connétable de Montmorency house, on the edge of the old ramparts,” he said.

The Connétable de Montmorency house

The property takes its name from Anne de Montmorency, the Constable of France and a leading figure at the 16th-century royal court, who reshaped the château and built elegant townhouses at Les Baux during the Renaissance. It stands on the edge of the village’s old ramparts. During the visit, Prince Albert II and Prince Jacques were photographed in front of the house and presented with an engraving of it.

A home — and a showcase

Prince Albert II framed the purchase as a legacy for his son and a new chapter for the Grimaldi Historic Sites network. “This house will be his — that of the princes of Monaco at Les Baux — but also a symbol and a showcase for the whole French network of Grimaldi Historic Sites,” he said, describing it as a “new relay” in an attachment he was passing to Prince Jacques. The house is to be restored under what he called an ambitious project over the coming months, and French media reported that it is intended to open as a museum dedicated to the Grimaldi Historic Sites. No purchase price was disclosed.

Centuries of ties

The acquisition deepens a bond dating to 1642, when, under the Treaty of Péronne, Louis XIII raised the seigneury of Les Baux to a marquisate and granted it to Hercule Grimaldi, son of the Monegasque sovereign. The title of Marquis des Baux has been borne by the heir to the throne ever since, and passed to Prince Jacques at his birth in 2014. One of France’s most visited villages, with around 1.5 million visitors a year, Les Baux was among the first communes to join the Grimaldi Historic Sites network.

Prince Albert II closed his address by pledging that the tie would endure. “We will always be — I assure you — Baussencs among the Baussencs,” he said, using the local name for the people of Les Baux.

See also: 

Prince Jacques handed the keys to Les Baux-de-Provence

Monaco Life is written by qualified journalists, writing original content. Sign up for our free newsletter, listen to our podcasts on Spotify, and follow us across Facebook,  Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok. 

Main photo credit: Michaël Alesi/Palais princier

Honouring the brave: Monaco commemorates 82 years of liberation

by: Virginia D’Umas
07/09/2026

On Thursday 3rd September, Monaco came alive with the sights and sounds of 1944 to mark the 82nd anniversary of its Liberation from German occupation, blending vibrant living history with deeply moving institutional tributes.

The day’s commemorations kicked off in the morning, bringing together government officials, local representatives, and patriotic associations.

Proceedings began at the Maison de France before continuing at the National Council, attended by Minister of State Christophe Mirmand and members of the Prince’s Government to honour those who fought for the Principality’s freedom.

Photo credit: Virginia D’Umas

Vintage jeeps and chocolate bars 

Bringing history vividly to life, a convoy of authentic Second World War vehicles – including vintage Jeeps and motorcycles – rumbled through the streets of Monaco toward the Place du Palais.

Members of the MonacoUSA association participated in full, authentic 1944 American military uniforms, delighting onlookers by handing out traditional chocolate bars to residents along the route in a cheerful nod to the historic arrival of liberating forces.

From left to right: Kimberlee Smith, Shae Clements and Merrily Tornatore (from MonacoUSA). Photo credit: Virginia D’Umas, Monaco Life

For the participants, the event was deeply personal. Kimberlee Smith from MonacoUSA shared her pride with Monaco Life in representing the organisation, saying, “I am very proud to be an American and to be a part of this. My father was in the service, as well as every member of my father’s family, and it’s a beautiful memorial day for us. We are here representing MonacoUSA, started by Princess Grace in 1973, to carry on her legacy.”

Echoing that sentiment, Merrily Tornatore, a member of the same association, added, “We are Americans, and we are here to represent our country. This is very important because we want to make sure the world knows what America really is and who Americans really are.”

Photo credit: Virginia D’Umas, Monaco Life

Camaraderie and music over lunch 

Between the morning ceremonies and afternoon tributes, members of the patriotic associations gathered for a convivial lunch where traditional food was shared, accompanied by lively music that filled the air with a true sense of 1944 camaraderie and celebration.

Solemn tributes at the cemetery 

The atmosphere shifted to solemn reflection when a formal remembrance ceremony began at 4pm at the Monaco Cemetery, gathering crowds of respectful residents and dignitaries alike. Official wreaths were laid at the War Memorial in memory of all the victims and fallen heroes of the conflict.

Attendees then gathered to pay their respects at the graves of Monegasque Resistance fighters René Borghini and Joseph Lajoux, serving as a powerful moment of reflection and remembrance to honour those who contributed to Monaco’s liberation and keep their memory alive for future generations.

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Main photo credit: Virginia D’Umas

Charles Leclerc says vision was blurred after heavy Monza crash

by: Cassandra Tanti
07/09/2026

Charles Leclerc has revealed that his vision was briefly impaired after the heavy crash that ended his Italian Grand Prix on the second lap — the Monégasque’s first concern as he climbed from his wrecked Ferrari at Monza on Sunday.

Leclerc was running in the top four, battling McLaren’s Oscar Piastri into the Parabolica — the high-speed final corner now named Curva Alboreto — when he lost the rear of his SF-26 and speared into the barriers, bringing out the red flag. He climbed out unaided and was taken to the circuit’s medical centre, where checks found no injuries, but he later disclosed that his right eye had troubled him in the moments after the impact.

‘The right eye was not showing me great vision’

“The neck was OK, it was just the vision a little bit at first,” Leclerc told reporters. “The right eye was not showing me great vision, but now it’s all good, so that’s the thing I was most worried of getting off the car.”

He said the rest was “a bit of pain here and there, which is normal after a crash like this”, and confirmed he expected “quite a few additional checks” that night and the following day to make sure he was fit for this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid.

Photo source: Scuderia Ferrari Media Centre

A crash he couldn’t fully explain

Leclerc, a two-time Monza winner in 2019 and 2024, was left sitting on the grass as the tifosi looked on, his home-from-home race over inside two laps. He suggested the car had felt strange under power in the moments before he lost it, without drawing a firm conclusion. “For the crash itself, I went on throttle and on the first lap it felt kind of weird; I had to go back off and on throttle,” he said. “On that second lap, I tried to do the same thing, but I don’t know, it just felt a little bit weird. We’ll look into it.” He said he had noticed “a bit of a difference in power delivery” between the first and second laps — something Ferrari intends to examine.

Team principal Frédéric Vasseur described the accident as a fine margin. “On the second lap he was side by side with Oscar (Piastri) going into the last corner and went slightly onto the dirty side of the track, which was enough for him to lose the car and hit the barriers,” he said. “It was a big impact, so the most important thing is that Charles is okay.”

Too close with Hamilton

The crash had come moments after a tense opening-lap battle between the two Ferraris. Starting third and fourth, Leclerc and team-mate Lewis Hamilton ran side by side through the first chicane, with Hamilton forced across the gravel and dropping down the order; the seven-time champion suggested over the radio that he had been pushed off. Leclerc conceded the fight had gone too far. “With Lewis it was a way too close into Turn 1 and unfortunately in Turn 2 — I don’t know if we had contact or whatsoever,” he said. “I was quite a lot on the inside kerb and tried to make the corner, which I didn’t do tight enough, and then I obviously only saw in the mirrors what happened, which is never what you want between two cars, between two cars of the same team.”

Hamilton, who sits third in the championship, is now 36 points clear of Leclerc after the pair’s contrasting afternoons.

Hamilton salvages sixth as Mercedes win

Hamilton lined up eighth for the restart on medium tyres and recovered to run as high as fourth, before slipping back on a circuit where Ferrari lacked straight-line speed, eventually finishing sixth. The race was won by Kimi Antonelli, leading a Mercedes one-two, on a weekend that also marked 30 years since Michael Schumacher’s first Monza victory for the Scuderia.

‘Turn the page’

Leclerc struck a determined note in Ferrari’s post-race statement. “It’s not the way we wanted our weekend to finish and we have to turn the page and look ahead to Madrid next week,” he said. “A huge thank you to all our tifosi who have supported us here at our home race. We will make sure to come back stronger.”

The season resumes with the Spanish Grand Prix at the new Madrid circuit from 11th to 13th September.

 

Thierry Lacoste, Prince Albert II’s former lawyer, charged in Monaco corruption inquiry

by: Cassandra Tanti
07/09/2026

 

Thierry Lacoste, the former personal lawyer of Prince Albert II, has been charged by a Monaco investigating judge with criminal conspiracy, organised bribery of a national public official, organised influence peddling and money laundering, the Principality’s public prosecutor has announced.

In a statement issued on 5th September, the Parquet Général said Lacoste had been placed in police custody on 2nd September and questioned several times by investigators from the Sûreté Publique. After two extensions of his custody, he was brought before an investigating judge on the morning of 5th September, charged and placed under judicial supervision.

Lacoste contests the allegations and remains presumed innocent. The judicial investigation is continuing.

The charges are criminal conspiracy, active bribery of a national public official as part of an organised group, passive influence peddling as part of an organised group, and money laundering.

Part of a wider investigation

The charges form part of a broader judicial investigation into active and passive influence peddling, the illegal taking of interests, active bribery of a national public official and passive bribery by a national public official – all allegedly committed as part of an organised group – as well as laundering the proceeds of an offence and criminal conspiracy.

It was in the same investigation that Didier Linotte, the former president of Monaco’s Supreme Court, the Tribunal Suprême, was charged in June 2025, as Monaco Life reported at the time.

The Esplanade des Pêcheurs

The investigation followed a complaint by Monaco property developer Patrice Pastor concerning the Esplanade des Pêcheurs, a major development planned for Port Hercule.

The project, led by Caroli Immo, did not proceed after the State withdrew from the agreement. Monaco’s Supreme Court subsequently found the State’s decision unlawful and, in 2020, ordered it to pay Caroli Immo €136.992 million plus capitalised statutory interest dating from 23rd February 2018.

Prince Albert II, acting in a personal capacity, and the Monegasque State later joined the criminal proceedings as civil parties.

‘Dossiers du Rocher’

The wider affair became public in 2021 through an anonymous website known as the Dossiers du Rocher, which accused four former figures close to Prince Albert II – including Lacoste and Linotte – of collusion.

Linotte became the first of those figures to be charged by the Monegasque authorities when he was placed under formal investigation in June 2025 for offences including organised unlawful taking of interests and passive bribery.

Reaction

According to the French news agency AFP, the Prince’s lawyer, Cyril Bonan, said those who had taken part in the alleged conduct — and against whom the courts considered there to be serious and corroborating evidence — would have to answer for their actions and could no longer pass themselves off as victims.

Lacoste’s lawyers, in a statement reported by AFP, called the indictment shameful, dismissing what they described as a jumble of unfounded accusations and arguing that the Monegasque justice system had, since 2023, been used to serve the powerful.

Meanwhile Pastor’s lawyers, Antoine Vey and Richard Malka, said the criminal charges confirmed the seriousness of the conduct their client had denounced for years, AFP reported.

Monaco Life is written by qualified journalists, writing original content. Sign up for our free newsletter, listen to our podcasts on Spotify, and follow us across Facebook,  Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok. 

Photo by Monaco Life

Prince Jacques handed the keys to Les Baux-de-Provence

by: Cassandra Tanti
07/09/2026

Prince Jacques, the 11-year-old heir to the Monegasque throne, was symbolically handed the keys to Les Baux-de-Provence on Friday, during a visit by the Princely Family to the French village that carries one of his hereditary titles.

The Prince was accompanied by his parents, Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene, and his twin sister, Princess Gabriella, for the public visit to Les Baux, a member of Monaco’s network of Grimaldi Historic Sites. The family was received by Anne Poniatowski, mayor of Les Baux-de-Provence and vice-president of the French association of Grimaldi Historic Sites, for an official ceremony held on the esplanade of the old château in the presence of local officials and residents.

A title dating to 1642

The visit celebrated a link stretching back nearly four centuries. Under the Treaty of Péronne, agreed between King Louis XIII and Prince Honoré II, which shifted Monaco from Spanish protectorate to French protection, the seigneury of Les Baux was raised to a marquisate in 1642 and granted to Hercule Grimaldi, son of the Monegasque sovereign.

The title of Marquis des Baux has since traditionally been borne by the heir to the Monegasque throne, and passed to Prince Jacques at his birth in 2014. In handing him the keys to the town, Les Baux repeated a gesture made in 1982 for his father — then hereditary prince — during a visit in the company of Princess Grace.

Photo credit: Michaël Alesi/Palais princier

An ‘ambassador of goodwill’

Addressing the gathering from the château esplanade, Prince Albert II presented his children to the village and reflected on 384 years of ties, recalling his own earlier visits in 1982, 1991 and 2012. “Princess Charlène and I are particularly moved to present to you today our son Jacques, whom I wished, at his birth, to link to your commune — as I myself was, by my father, in 1958 — and our daughter Gabriella,” he said, noting that Gabriella is herself connected to another French region, the Carladès in Auvergne.

The Prince was keen to stress that the title looks forwards rather than back. It was, he said, “in no way a matter of recalling, through the title of Marquis des Baux, a bygone age and regime, but of offering an ‘ambassador of goodwill’ who embodies roots and ensures continuity”.

A house for the princes at Les Baux

Prince Albert II also used the occasion to announce that Monaco is buying a property in the village. “I am very happy to announce today the ongoing acquisition, from your commune, of a house in the village: the house known as the Connétable de Montmorency house, on the edge of the old ramparts,” he said, adding that it would be restored under an ambitious project in the months to come.

He framed the purchase as an inheritance for his son. “This house will be his — that of the princes of Monaco at Les Baux — but also a symbol and a showcase for the whole French network of Grimaldi Historic Sites,” he said, describing it as a “new relay” in a family attachment he was passing to Prince Jacques.

Stained glass and a stamp

The Monegasque delegation also visited the church of Saint-Vincent, which houses contemporary stained-glass windows created in 1962 by the master glassmaker Max Ingrand, a gift from Prince Rainier III following the birth of his son, Albert.

To mark the visit, Monaco’s stamp office is issuing a postage stamp depicting one of the windows. The marquisate of Les Baux was also the subject of a Monegasque €2 commemorative coin in 2025.

Prince Albert II closed by pledging that the bond would endure. “We will always be — I assure you — Baussencs among the Baussencs,” he said, using the local name for the people of Les Baux.

Monaco Life is written by qualified journalists, writing original content. Sign up for our free newsletter, listen to our podcasts on Spotify, and follow us across Facebook,  Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok. 

Main photo credit: Michaël Alesi/Palais princier

 

Football: Monaco end turbulent week with spectacular PSG win

by: Luke Entwistle
05/09/2026
A smiling Idumbo is followed by his Monaco teammates as his side take the lead at the Parc des Princes

A turbulent week had a silver lining for AS Monaco, who, by beating reigning champions PSG (1-2) on Friday night, retain top spot in Ligue 1. 

Monaco made headlines for the wrong reasons in midweek. The Principality club were involved in two high-profile sagas on transfer deadline day. Both deals would fall through, with Lamine Camara not joining Chelsea and Folarin Balogun opting against making a big-money move to Everton. It was a complex situation for Les Monégasques to contend with. Desperate to keep Camara but needing to raise funds, Balogun’s exit was prioritised. That broke down late on Tuesday night, opening the door for Camara to move to Stamford Bridge. But when Balogun’s move to Everton was reignited at the final hour, that door was firmly closed once more for Camara, despite the midfielder asking Monaco CEO Thiago Scuro to facilitate a move.

Balogun’s move to Merseyside then also fell through in the early hours of Wednesday morning, with the USMNT international opting against the switch. Scuro would later explain that Balogun felt “uncomfortable” after doubts were raised by Everton during the medical. Both remain at the club. Speaking on Wednesday, Scuro batted away the perception that Monaco were the “bad guys in the room”. In any case, it is a suboptimal scenario for all parties and particularly Monaco, still needing to raise funds and cut the wage bill.

Camara “affected” but imperious against PSG

Camara, according to Filipe Luís, was “probably affected” by the saga. The Monaco manager added, however, that there was no question of the Senegal international missing Friday night’s trip to the Capital. “He needs to play. His head needs to be where he loves, on the pitch,” said the Brazilian.

If Camara wanted to refocus on on-pitch matters, then so did the rest of the club, and there was no better way to put a turbulent week behind them than by beating the reigning French and European champions; Camara, played a big part in Friday night’s success, imperious in the middle of the park once again. Monaco have become PSG’s bogey team, and on Friday, they became the first Ligue 1 team to beat PSG in three consecutive games since the arrival of the Parisian club’s QSI owners in 2011.

Motivation was high for Les Parisiens, playing in front of their fans for the first time this season and still in search of their first win in Ligue 1. They looked on course for it. Marquinhos’ chested finish was the difference between the two sides at the break. PSG had looked the better side in the first half and deservedly led a Ligue 1 match for the first time all season.

PSG “the best team in the world” – Luís

But, unlike in yesteryear, there is a vulnerability at the back, and it was exploited. The space came down Achraf Hakimi’s wing. First it was Nazinho who popped up at the back post, just before the hour mark, to head home his first goal since joining from partner club Cercle Brugge over the summer.

And it was down the same side that Stanis Idumbo created space in the box before finishing at Matvey Safonov’s near post. The Russian should have done better with the Belgian’s effort. The Principality club were made to cling on. PSG had the ball in the net in the dying stages, only for the close-range effort to be ruled out for offside, and Ousmane Dembélé, off the bench, went close twice in stoppage time. The Ballon d’Or winner’s second effort required a spectacular fingertip save from Lukas Hradecky.

Monaco clung on (1-2) to register their fifth win in five under Luís. Olympique de Marseille were posited as the first major test last weekend. Luís passed that one with flying colours; PSG, “the best team in the world”, in Luís’ words, was a much sterner challenge, especially given the context around the game. But at the end of a week that could so easily have derailed the positive momentum that Luís and his young squad were building, Monaco sit atop the tree in Ligue 1. There was plenty of noise around Monaco this week, but on Friday, they did their talking on the pitch.

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Photo credit: AS Monaco