Monaco’s musicians were welcomed in Monaco City Hall to celebrate the Feast of Saint Cecilia, which is celebrated in the Principality on the Sunday following National Day, November 19. A mass in the Cathedral preceded a procession through Monaco Ville of the Principality’s musicians.
It was during the fifth century that the popularity of Saint Cecilia began to develop in Rome, when her name appears in the prayers of the Mass. According to Don Lanciarez, a parish priest of Monaco in the eighteenth century, the Saint was the “patroness of musicians” in Monaco, but there is no documented evidence of a particular cult around the Saint.
A certain solemnity to the Feast was given in Monaco when the priest-composer Louis-Lazare Perruchot created the Choir of the Cathedral in 1930, and Sainte Cecilia remains the Patron Saint for the Principality’s musicians and musicians.
A statuette commemorating the Saint by the artist Zagone sits at the corner of rue Emile de Loth and the Church.