Monaco’s future new district Mareterra will be delivered eight months ahead of schedule, the company behind the project has revealed.
The land extension project, launched in 2015, will add six hectares, or 3%, to the 2km2 total landmass of the Principality of Monaco.
On Monday, developer Anse du Portier revealed to AFP, in a statement also provided to Monaco Life, that the €2 billion project will beat its initial due date of 2025 by eight months.
An ambitious project unique to Monaco
The Mareterra real estate project includes five buildings, for a total of 130 apartments, and 10 villas in a prestigious complex designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano and the firm Vallode et Pistre.
Almost all of the housing has been sold, and while the official price per square metre remains confidential, estimates have put it as high as €120,000 a square metre, double the current average of €62,000 per square metre in nearby Larvotto.
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While the majority of the building structures have been completed, the facades and finishings are next in line, as well as the public areas that will be open to all: a one kilometre seaside promenade, small port and park, which will be accessible from the end of 2024.
According to Anse du Portier, the operation currently employs more than 2,300 companies in the Mediterranean arc, some of whom have been participating in the project for nearly 10 years. It is also the largest real estate project in Europe, entirely financed by private funds.
“The sea is a new terrain to conquer”
This new, luxurious eco-district – the first in Monaco – is positioned next to the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco’s largest convention and congress centre, on an underwater embankment 50 metres deep.
It is located between two underwater nature reserves and enormous effort has been directed to recreating new habitats for fauna and flora on the structure, on the rocks and on artificial reefs.
Developers are aiming to achieve sustainability rewards for the innovative ways in which it has integrated the project into the coastal environent, namely the HQE Aménagements label. When it is delivered, Mareterra will be Monaco’s greenest district.
“Mareterra is a real achievement for Monaco,” says Guy-Thomas Levy-Soussan, managing director of Anse du Portier. “By changing the geography of the State, we change the course of its history. But Mareterra has the ambition to be an inspiration for the world while we are all faced with climate change and rising waters. We need to find technologies that will allow some large coastal cities that could be submerged to last.
“The sea is thus a new terrain to conquer but it must not be damaged,” he adds. “We hope to have demonstrated that this is possible and to have advanced reflections and good practices in this field.”
Monaco has already claimed 40 hectares in land reclamations since the 1950s, the majority in the Fontvielle district, delivered in the 1970s.
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Main image rendering of the Mareterrra district, source Anse du Portier