Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene received Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Prince’s Palace on Friday 2nd October for the first state visit ever made by an Italian head of state to Monaco – a first that the Prince said was long overdue between two neighbours whose shared history reaches back more than seven centuries to the Genoese roots of the Grimaldi dynasty.
The President was accompanied by his daughter, Laura Mattarella, who has fulfilled the role of Italy’s first lady since the death of her mother, Marisa, in 2012. Over a single day, the visit moved from military ceremony on the Rock to an evening of Italian opera and a state dinner in the Palace’s Throne Room, where both heads of state used their toasts to reflect on centuries of common history and on the turbulent world beyond the Mediterranean.
A gap finally filled
Addressing his guests in the Throne Room, Prince Albert acknowledged that the two men had until now always met on Italian soil.
“It is indeed the first time that we have had the pleasure of receiving a President of the Italian Republic for a state visit to the Principality. This first therefore makes up for something that was missing, and I am happy to be able to do so with you,” said the Prince.
“For we meet regularly, and if until now it has always been in Italy or at international meetings, I must confess to having found a certain advantage in that, so friendly and warm has your welcome always been,” he added.
President Mattarella recalled that his visit came almost seven decades after Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace were received in Rome. “It is a true privilege for all of us to take part in the first Italian state visit to the Principality of Monaco. A state visit that I am honoured to make almost seventy years after that of Their Serene Highnesses Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace to Rome,” said the President.
A fifth of the population
The Prince paid tribute to the Italian community, which he said now accounts for one in five of Monaco’s residents. “Some even choose to live in Monaco, and the Italian community today represents a fifth of our population,” said Prince Albert, before switching into Italian to honour “all the Italians who, over the centuries, have contributed to the development of Monaco”.
“The role they have played in our history has been fundamental. And the many ties they have created continue to enrich us today, on both sides of the border,” he said.
According to figures published in the Palace’s press dossier, 7,559 Italians were among Monaco’s 38,857 residents in the 2025 census, while 8,962 Italians worked in the Principality’s private sector at the end of last year, around 15% of the workforce. Some 2,500 companies linked to Italian nationals operate in Monaco, chiefly in luxury, fashion, shipping and business services.
The night of 8th January 1297
President Mattarella reached back to the episode that founded the Grimaldi dynasty on the Rock. “Above all, there is an indissoluble bond created on the night of 8th January 1297. The daring and shrewdness of the Genoese Francesco Grimaldi marked not only the origin of the long and prosperous life of the Principality, but also the intertwining of Monegasque and Ligurian history,” he said.
He also praised the Prince’s work as president of the Association of Grimaldi Historic Sites, which brings together towns in France and Italy linked to the family. In recent years the Prince Albert II has retraced his ancestors’ footsteps through former Grimaldi strongholds in Liguria, Piedmont, Basilicata, Puglia, Sicily and Calabria. The Palace itself bears the mark of that heritage: in the 16th century the medieval fortress was reshaped into an Italian Renaissance palace, and frescoes by painters of the Genoese school, hidden for centuries beneath later layers of paint, have been uncovered since 2013 and are still being restored.
Sovereignty and peace in a changing world
The Italian President’s toast took on a sharper tone as he turned to international affairs, describing the Principality as a model at a time of renewed geopolitical tension.
“In a constantly changing global landscape, marked by severe crises and by the re-emergence of dynamics of domination that we believed belonged to the past, the Principality and its international relations represent a virtuous example. For seven hundred years now, your country has managed to reconcile the will to maintain its own sovereignty with the pursuit of peaceful coexistence,” said President Mattarella.
He congratulated Monaco on its presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the first in the Principality’s history, which it has held since May. Prince Albert, for his part, said the two countries shared “a vision founded on dialogue, law and multilateralism”.
Fifty years of RAMOGE
The environment ran through both speeches. Prince Albert noted that the RAMOGE agreement between Italy, France and Monaco on protecting the marine environment had been signed half a century ago in the very room where they were dining.
“This anniversary reminds us how much we are capable of achieving together, but also how much still remains to be done, in particular to preserve the Mediterranean that we share,” said the Prince, who also saluted Italy’s decision during Mattarella’s presidency to enshrine environmental protection in its Constitution.
The President described the Mediterranean as “that Mare Nostrum, shaken today by conflicts, violence and migration crises, and which we aspire, despite too many headwinds, to make once again a source of civilisation, a sea of peace and of cooperation between peoples.”
Bartoli and an Italian evening at the opera
Earlier in the evening, the Princely Couple had welcomed the President and his daughter to the Opéra de Monte-Carlo for a concert by Roman mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli with Les Musiciens du Prince and the Opera chorus. The programme opened with the Italian anthem, Il Canto degli Italiani, and the Monegasque anthem, before moving through Handel, Gluck, Rossini and Bizet to Verdi’s ‘Va, pensiero’ from Nabucco and the Brindisi from La traviata, with ‘Caruso’ and ‘Santa Lucia luntana’ listed among the encores.
President Mattarella thanked his hosts for the performance and singled out Bartoli, who became director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in 2023, for particular praise, describing her leadership as that of the “first woman in the history of the institution” and “a source of pride for us”.
He also expressed Italy’s gratitude for the loan of the painting ‘Hannibal crossing the Alps on an elephant’ to the ‘Barocco globale’ exhibition in Rome, which Prince Albert visited in April 2025.
Honours in the Salon des Glaces
The day had begun in the Cour d’Honneur, where the Princely Family greeted the Italian guests in the presence of both official delegations. Military honours were rendered under the command of Colonel Tony Varo, and the Italian and Monegasque anthems were played before the two heads of state reviewed the detachments.
After a private audience between the Prince and the President in the Salon de Famille, and a meeting between Princess Charlene and Laura Mattarella in the Salle des Gardes, the two delegations moved to the Salon des Glaces for an exchange of decorations. Prince Albert raised President Mattarella to the dignity of Grand Cross of the Order of Saint-Charles, the Principality’s highest distinction, and made Laura Mattarella a Grand Cross of the Order of Grimaldi. In return, the President raised Princess Charlene to the dignity of Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
A sonnet for peace
President Mattarella chose to close his toast with lines by Louis Notari, the author of ‘The Legend of Saint Devota’, which in 1927 became the first work written in the Monegasque language. “If only, once and for all, every flag in the whole world would speak as you do, you who are the oldest: may peace reign everywhere!” said the President, quoting Notari’s sonnet addressed to Monaco’s flag.
Prince Albert ended his own toast by describing his guest as “a man I hold in particularly high esteem, an admirable head of state, and the representative of a friendly country”, before raising a glass to the friendship between Monaco and Italy.
The visit is due to conclude on Saturday 3rd October with a meeting with Monaco’s Italian community and a tour of the Oceanographic Museum alongside Prince Albert II, Minister of State Christophe Mirmand and Robert Calcagno, Director General of the Oceanographic Institute.
See more in the gallery below. Photos credit: Michaël Alesi / Frédéric Nebinger / Palais princier…
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Main photo credit: Michaël Alesi / Palais princier