Monaco’s buses and boat bus will be free all day on Thursday 19th November for National Day, with extra services laid on for the Te Deum and most private vehicles barred from Monaco-Ville for much of the morning.
Two additional buses will take passengers up to the Rock for the Te Deum service at Monaco Cathedral, while access to Monaco-Ville will be closed to most private vehicles from 8:30am to 2pm.
Extra buses to Monaco-Ville
The Compagnie des Autobus de Monaco will run two special services departing at 8:30am, one from Jardin Exotique and one from Saint-Roman, in addition to the regular timetable for the day. Both buses will leave Monaco-Ville at 1pm after the service, returning to their starting points.
Road access and parking restrictions
City buses and taxis will still be able to enter Monaco-Ville during the restrictions, along with chauffeur-driven cars, vehicles with an official pass, deliveries to the Prince’s Palace, and emergency and public service vehicles.
Parking will be prohibited from 7am to 2pm on Rue de l’Abbaye, Allée Saint-Jean-Paul II, Rue Philibert Florence, Place de la Mairie, Rue des Remparts and Avenue Saint-Martin. One-way rules on some streets in Monaco-Ville will also be suspended during those hours.
Later in the day, parking restrictions will apply from 3pm to 11:59pm on Avenue Princesse Grace between numbers 27 and 31, in the two-wheeler parking area outside number 17, and on Ruelle Saint-Jean.
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Photo source: Compagnie des Autobus de Monaco
Carnival float makers bring Christmas parade back to Nice
Nice’s Grande Parade de Noël returns to Avenue Jean Médecin on Sunday 6th December for its sixth edition, with organisers billing the free evening show as the largest Christmas procession in the south of France and the official start of the city’s festive shopping season.
Organised by the traders’ association Nice Shopping, the parade will set off at dusk from the top of Avenue Jean Médecin and make its way down to Place Masséna between 5pm and 6.30pm. Organisers say a record 60,000 people turned out last year, and they expect large crowds of residents and visitors to line the city centre again for the 90-minute show.
Carnival floats and street performers
Led by artistic director Sylviane Palomba, this year’s parade will feature more than 200 performers from 16 professional groups, including dancers, acrobats, stilt-walkers, drummers, circus acts and mascots.
Three large floats built by the Povigna and Pignataro families, who have made floats for the Nice Carnival for generations, will give the procession a distinctly local feel. Organisers have also promised several new surprises, with details still to be announced.
Photo credit: David Nouy
A boost for local shops
“With the Grande Parade de Noël, we want to create a moment of sharing and wonder that marks the start of Christmas shopping in Nice’s stores,” said Patrick Nolier, President of Nice Shopping and Director of Nicetoile. “Because nothing else in France matches its scale, the parade helps make Nice a must-visit festive destination. It brings energy to our neighbourhoods, supports local independent shops, and attracts more visitors to the city.”
First held in 2021, the parade is part of Nice Shopping’s year-round work to promote local shops and artisans. The association says it promoted 500 Nice businesses through its website and social media in 2025, generating more than 8.2 million views.
The full programme will be published on niceshopping.fr and on the association’s @Niceshopping.06 social media accounts.
More than 300 of Monaco’s six-year-olds spent Wednesday 11th November at the Grimaldi Forum learning how to spot danger in the water, as the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation brought the Principality’s emergency services together for its annual drowning prevention morning.
Seventeen first-year primary classes and 52 chaperones took part in this year’s ‘Drowning Prevention Campaign’, which aims to instil simple, life-saving instincts in children before they set foot on a beach or jump into a pool. The stakes are high: drowning claims around 300,000 lives worldwide every year, according to the World Health Organization. The morning has become a fixture of the school year, with 310 pupils taking part in 2024, as reported by Monaco Life.
Instincts rather than rescues
“After two hours of workshops, we don’t expect the children to know how to perform first aid or rescue one another,” Anne Boggio, Director General of the Princess Charlene Foundation, told Monaco Life. “It is more about how they react if they see something that looks wrong.”
“At the end of the day, we just want these children to go home tonight and say, ‘When I am in the water, I know I have to pay attention to what I am doing, but also to the people around me,’” she added.
Emergency services on hand
The Department of National Education, Youth and Sports (DENJS) worked alongside the Foundation on the event. Across nine short theoretical and practical sessions, children rotated through stations run by the Monegasque Red Cross, the Maritime and Airport Police, the Monaco Fire Brigade and the Monaco Water Rescue and Diving Centre (CSAPM).
Gareth Wittstock, Secretary General of the Princess Charlene Foundation, and Anne Boggio, Director General of the Princess Charlene Foundation, with this year’s mascots, Olaf and Stitch. Photo credit: Virginia D’Umas
The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation joined the line-up for the first time, raising awareness of the Mediterranean marine environment and the need to protect it, while Olaf and Stitch puppets kept the six-year-olds engaged between workshops.
At the Red Cross stand, volunteers took children through real-world hazards using miniature set-ups. “We study different scenes starting at the beach, moving to the swimming pool, and even inside the home in a bathroom or bathtub,” Christiane Petrilli from the Monegasque Red Cross told Monaco Life. “It lets us discuss drowning risks anywhere water is present, especially when parents aren’t looking.”
Photo credit: JC Vinaj
Police and fire officers taught pupils which emergency numbers to call and showed them life-saving rescue equipment, while aquatic rescue teams used blue gym mats to demonstrate sea rescue techniques and explain how to recognise someone in difficulty.
Photo credit: JC Vinaj
Months of planning
“It takes several months to organise. We have to align dates with the schools, coordinate with all our partners, and secure the venue. The Grimaldi Forum is incredibly generous in providing the space free of charge every year. The format remains consistent, but every year we try to add something new, whether that’s new mascots, extra activities, or welcoming new partners,” said Damira Bottin, Event Manager at the Princess Charlene Foundation.
The morning closed with applause for the physical education teachers, emergency teams and organisers who made it possible, sending Monaco’s youngest pupils home better prepared for time in and around the water.
Monaco Telecom’s ties with Huawei gave 25 executives from 17 Monegasque companies a rare look inside the Chinese technology giant’s research operation in Shenzhen, the centrepiece of a week-long trade mission to China that ended on Tuesday.
The Monaco Chamber of Commerce mission ran from Tuesday 3rd to Tuesday 10th November and also took in Hong Kong and Macao, in China’s Pearl River Delta. It follows the first high-level bilateral economic talks between Monaco and China in more than 13 years, held in the Principality in May, as reported by Monaco Life.
Monaco Telecom’s Huawei connection
Monaco Telecom chief executive Martin Péronnet played a key role in arranging the Huawei visit, according to the Chamber, which pointed to the relationship between the two companies through Xavier Niel, one of Monaco Telecom’s shareholders. The operator has worked with Huawei on the Principality’s 5G network, as reported by Monaco Life.
AI for banking, hospitality and energy
The Shenzhen briefing focused on Huawei’s research and development, which the Chamber said employs around 114,000 of the company’s 215,000 staff worldwide, more than half its workforce. Huawei presented its work on smart cities and outlined potential uses for artificial intelligence across several industries.
The presentation covered applications in banking, telecommunications, hospitality, events and retail. It also looked at how the technology could be used in warehouse management, transport and energy distribution, with a focus on renewable energy.
Healthcare data from Shanghai
One example discussed during the visit was a database of clinical cases first set up at a hospital in Shanghai, which the Chamber said is now expanding across China. Huawei’s presentation explored how artificial intelligence could be used to analyse the cases held in such a database.
Inside a humanoid robotics lab
The delegation ended its Shenzhen visit at a robotics research laboratory, which the Chamber described as one of the most advanced in the world. There, the group watched humanoid robots demonstrate their movements and saw lifelike human replicas.
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 credit: Chambre de Commerce de Monaco
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