Having initially missed out on a wildcard for the Monte-Carlo Masters, Andy Murray will now compete in the event following the withdrawals of Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz.
Stan Wawrinka, Fabio Fognini, Valentin Vacherot and Jack Draper were initially the recipients of the highly-coveted wildcards, which were announced last week. However, a lot can change in a week, and a lot has happened since that announcement.
Nadal and Alcaraz pulled out earlier this week, with both suffering injuries from which they have not sufficiently recovered. Felix Auger-Aliassime and Gaël Monfils have both since pulled out, leaving room for Murray, who looked to have missed out, to compete in the tournament, which begins on Saturday 8th April.
Murray, who has recovered from two hip operations, hasn’t competed at the Monte-Carlo Masters since 2017. The 35-year-old Scotsman reached the semi-finals of the competition in 2009, 2011 and 2016.
Dominic Thiem returns to Monaco
Another player to profit from the spate of injuries in the lead up to the tournament is Austrian player Dominic Thiem. He benefits from Monfils’ injury, which meant that Draper’s entry was no longer on invitation. Thiem won the US Open in 2020, but hasn’t reached a Grand Slam final since. He has notably suffered with a recurring wrist injury.
Fognini, who was reliant on a wildcard to compete in the event at the Monte-Carlo Country Club, has also had to withdraw through injury, and he is replaced by compatriot Lorenzo Sonego. Wildcards have also been granted to Frenchmen Luca Van Assche and Benoit Paire, whilst Monégasque players Lucas Catarina and Hugo Nys have the chance to feature, but must first pass through the qualifying rounds.
The Champagne and Oysters Cycle Club’s fundraising bike ride from St. Tropez to Monaco is scheduled for this April, offering an opportunity for professional and amateur cyclists to pedal for a good cause.
Due to Covid, it’s been four years since the last charity bike ride. This year’s 140km route kicks off on Sunday 23rd April at 8am from St. Tropez, with cyclists estimated to arrive in Monaco at 5pm. The event then wraps up with a fun-filled street party, including food and live music, to celebrate the end of the ride.
The COCC was established in 2011 by seven friends with a passion for cycling. The club has grown over the years, and the annual fundraising bike ride from St. Tropez to Monaco now attracts support from celebrities and international personalities. Past riders have included HSH Prince Albert II, professional cyclists, and Formula One drivers.
Pedal for a cause
The annual bike ride, now in its 9th year, will donate the funds raised to the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation, an organisation which works to improve water safety for everyone through a range of programmes, including teaching children to swim.
Established in 2012 by Princess Charlene, a former Olympic swimmer, the foundation has helped more than 1,000,000 people through over 510 projects spanning more than 43 countries.
“Anyone who sees what the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation does should be willing to support,” said COCC co-founder Damian Crean.
COCC riders arrive for lunch at Ma Nolan’s Nice Port in 2019. Photo provided
Sponsorship opportunities
Each year, the bike ride raises around 100,000€, and this year the organisers are hoping to raise even more by encouraging Monaco businesses to get behind the cause by either donating directly to the foundation or sponsoring the event.
For businesses wishing to sponsor the COCC Bike Ride there are a variety of options. Riders are welcome to donate as well, with participants required to raise a minimum of 1,000€ in sponsorship. This also covers the riders’ professional kit, mechanical backup, insurance, brunch at the halfway point, water and energy supplies, as well as a contribution to the charity and one ticket for the after-party.
The Princess Grace Irish Library, with the support of the Irish Research Council,is set to host an evening of harp music and a lecture by Dr. Helen Lawlor from TU Dublin.
Dr. Lawlor’s performance on the harp will be inspired by some of the titles in the Princess Grace collection of music scores.
Dr. Lawlor is currently undertaking research of the collection and is organising a symposium in Dublin in June with experts presenting, including Dr. Fintan Vallely who catalogued the library’s collection and who performed for Prince Albert II of Monaco last month to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
To join in this unique event on 13th April and discover more about the music and symbolism of the Irish harp in musical practice, literature and cultural representations, reserve your place on info@pgil.mc or buy your online ticket here.
Do you have an event in Monaco or the French Riviera that you would like us to include in our What’s On section and events calendar? Please email editor@monacolife.net.
The Côte d’Azur Garden Festival blooms here in Monaco
Spring has sprung with the launch of the annual Côte d’Azur Garden Festival. Here’s where to find Monaco’s two spectacular entries as well as a special non-competition creation from the government.
As the days grow longer and warmer, signs of spring are everywhere, most notably in the arrival of a glorious array of seasonal flowers. To celebrate this return, the Côte d’Azur Garden Festival is holding its fourth edition, from 25th March to 1st May, which showcases the beauty and bounty of spring in towns and cities right along the Riviera.
“Surprising Perspectives”
A visit to the Terraces of the Casino on the Hotel Fairmont side will give the public a chance to enjoy a series of stunning installations relating to this year’s “Surprising Perspectives” theme.
The Principality has two competition gardens in the running: the first creation is by French duo Sarah Houlbert and Julien Thirion, and it is called “The Pier”, while the second, entitled “Fire: The Surprising Gardener” has been designed by Amber Myers and Studio Fish & Pot from the Netherlands and South Africa respectively.
The government has also taken part in the out-of-competition category with “A Question of Point of View” by Timothée Roche, a draftsman-designer at the Department of Urban Planning’s design office.
Public fun day
To highlight the botanical offerings of the region, a special event will be taking place on-site on 1st April from 10am to 5pm. Called “Discovering Our Botanical and Artistic Heritage”, there will be family-friendly activities such as a treasure hunt in a plant maze, a giant memory game and various creative workshops.
Nice, Cannes, Cap d’Ail, Menton, Antibes and more are also involved, with a total of 17 gardens “in competition”. There are an additional 14 designs outside the competition to be enjoyed over the 38 days of the event.
“This floral firework display will definitely be worth a look,” said Charles Ange Ginésy, President of the Department of the Alpes-Maritimes. “It will be the showcase of our territory and the know-how of our professionals. It will also be an opportunity to raise everyone’s awareness of environmentally friendly practices.”
Each year, the festival and its gardens attract an estimated 400,000 visitors. For the full Côte d’Azur Garden Festival programme, please click here.
Do you have an event in Monaco or the French Riviera that you would like us to include in our What’s On section and events calendar? Please email editor@monacolife.net.
Photo source: Yoksel Zok for Unsplash. This article was originally published on 27th March.
Prince’s Palace reopens to reveal new hidden frescos under restoration
It is the latest stride in a decade-long marathon to restore the Prince’s Palace of Monaco to its former Renaissance glory.
Frescoes that were discovered hidden behind layers of paint in 2015 are almost all renewed.
A team of 40 restorers has been whittled down to 20, and they work meticulously now in the Throne Room, recreating frescos for generations to come.
Most of the restored Renaissance-era paintings were unveiled to the public in July 2022 before the Palace was closed again in September.
Now, from Sunday 2nd April, the public will once again be invited into the ‘Grand Apartments’ of the Grimaldi Palace for a tour that begins in the ‘Hercules Gallery’ overlooking the Palace Courtyard.
The Hercules Gallery at the Palais Princier in Monaco. Photo by Monaco Life
Hidden frescoes were uncovered in this 50-metre-long gallery two years after restoration works began in 2013. Experts believe they date back to the 16th century, during the Italian Renaissance. They suspect Genoese artists created the frescoes, which span around 600 square metres throughout the palace, based on the style of art and the type of lime-based plaster used.
The discovery places the Grimaldi family and the Palace of Monaco within a new historical context as a Renaissance palace.
A tour of the Grimaldi Palace
Built in 1197, the Palace of Monaco has been inhabited by the Grimaldi family ever since they overtook the fortress in 1297. Throughout the centuries, the Grimaldis expanded and updated the palace to keep up with the fashions of the time, a clue as to perhaps why these original frescoes were painted over.
On a press tour just days before the official opening, our guide explains how the original designs had been completely covered in the 19th century by Monegasque artist Philibert Florence and his team. Philibert was born into a family of Monegasque artists, and left for Rome in 1859 at age 20 to study drawing and painting with a grant provided by Prince Charles III. Upon his return to Monaco, he was commissioned to redo the frescoes at the palace.
Thankfully, many of these were painted on “plates” and positioned over the top of the original designs. Restorers have maintained the contrast in one of the scenes in the gallery: on the left, we see the less remarkable work of Philibert Florence which has been retouched many times over the years; on the right, the restored 16th century fresco which was originally created using watercolour on wet plaster to draw the pigments into the material and maintain its longevity.
The contrast between a 16th century restored fresco (right) and a 19th century painting positioned over the top (left). Photo by Monaco Life
“Here, you have a very clear indication of what is and what is not fresco,” explains our guide. “When you see fresco, you feel like light is streaming from the wall, you see a particular luminosity.”
In another fresco, our guide explains how they recreated a scene in which Hercules is holding Diomedes and feeding him to a mare. In order to paint Hercules as anatomically correct as possible, they used a live model – a man who works in the palace archives and who also happens to be an MMA fighter.
“He has the stature of Hercules, he is strong, but after an hour of holding one of the restorers in his arms, he begged us to stop,” laughs the guide. “However, if we didn’t position him like that, holding another man, we wouldn’t know how his legs would look in this scene. And that’s how we reproduced the human anatomy on plates like this.”
Like the Monegasque painters who came centuries before them, the restorers have positioned the plates on top of the original frescoes. Only this time, they are aeronautic plates: very thin and very resistant to the elements, with a thin gap to allow airflow.
The 16th century fresco (left) looks nothing like the 19th century artwork that covers it (right). Photo by Monaco Life.
Frescoes in the Throne Room of the Prince’s Palace
The striking red Throne Room is where the final restoration works are being carried out amid official ceremonies that continue to take place here.
Perched on scaffolding high above the throne, a team of experts are scraping away the final elements of 19th century paintings that had been covering the 500-year-old frescoes that lie beneath. Most are a stark contrast to the original (see picture above).
In one corner, a laser is being used because solvents are just too harsh for many aspects of this work. In another corner, painters are using water colours based on pigments used in the 16th century, with a technique known as trattegio – painting in tiny parallel lines – so that they can be distinguished from the original works.
“The fundamental thing is to ensure that the restored works hold up over time and do not degrade prematurely,” reveals restorer Sophie Prévost.
The frescoes on the south-side are barely visible, while those on the northside are remarkably preserved.
Some of the frescos are in better condition than others. Photo by Monaco Life
The team behind the 21st century restoration
It is clearly a labour of love for these conservators-restorers. They sit in one position for hours, doing painstakingly minute and intricate work.
“The hardest part is maintaining our posture, particularly while working on the ceiling for long hours, and the pressure that it puts on our lower back and arms,” explains one restorer. “But we have regular access to therapy, and we love what we do.”
A dedicated team of conservators-restorers undertake painstaking work that will remain for generations to come. Photo by Monaco Life
They have come from all over the world – Italy, Germany, America, France and Holland – to be a part of one of the largest conservation-restoration projects ever seen in Europe.
“It’s a 10-year project, so it’s been difficult to maintain the team and the continuity,” says our guide. “But they are all attracted by the palace and by the project.”
This vast conservation and restoration project is due to be completed by the end of 2025, provided they don’t come across any new discoveries. But this is a very real possibility, because the underlying secrets of the last three rooms in the “old quarter” are still yet to be explored.
Click on our Instagram video below to see more images of the Palace frescos…
From this Friday, the vibrant new Petit Marché de Monaco Ville will be held every week, selling a bounty of fresh produce and breathing new life into this historic, but largely touristic, part of the Principality.
Monaco-Ville, colloquially known as The Rock or Le Rocher, is the neighbourhood that encompasses the Palace, the cathedral and some of the oldest streets in the Principality. The Grimaldi family has resided in this section since 1297, making it an important historic centre, though one that is often overlooked by locals.
Efforts to change that, and thus revitalise the area, are being put in motion with plans hatched by Marjorie Crovetto, the Principality’s Delegate for Commerce, Halls and Markets, now coming to fruition.
The weekly farmer’s market, called the Petit Marché de Monaco Ville or the Little Market of Monaco Ville, is starting up on Friday 31st March. For now, just one producteur of fruit and vegetables will be present.
It can be found between 8am and 1pm on the the Alleé Saint Jean-Paul II, a stone’s throw from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.
A home delivery service
For those who find it a challenge to make it up to the Rock, a home delivery service has been set up by the townhall for people who reside in Monaco and need a bit of extra help transporting purchased items. It is similar to the service offered at Monaco’s two other market centres: La Condamine and the Marché de Monte-Carlo.
Do you have an event in Monaco or the French Riviera that you would like us to include in our What’s On section and events calendar? Please email editor@monacolife.net.
Photo source: Shelley Pauls for Unsplash
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