Turning his back on the Italian mafiosi who were building along the entire coast, Rainier joined forces with the Pastor family, builders in Monaco since the thirties, and at a relentless pace Monte Carlo spread over the heights into an awesome cluster of high-priced high-rises for people looking to avoid taxes in the sun. At the same time, the prince gave tax breaks to smokestack-free small industry and encouraged bankers to set up offshore branches. There are now ten bank accounts in Monaco for every resident.

The principality that Rainier inherited was composed of the town of Monaco, Monte Carlo across the harbor, and a colorful neighborhood of modest local citizens called Condamine. His ancestor Prince Charles III had ceded Menton and Roquebrune—eighty percent of his territory—to Napoleon III in 1861. In exchange, the French abandoned the thought of annexation and built a highway spiraling along the mountains and a tunnel for rail passage into the principality, previously accessible only by water.

Rainier increased his inherited lands by a fifth by pushing back the sea and creating Fontvieille, where light industry and expensive housing now prevail. With Grace Kelly, the Hollywood star he married in 1956, he gave still more dimension to his principality. Grace drew the celebrities who were her friends, while at the same time Monaco invested in the uncontestable prestige of the arts. The royal couple lured talent into the ballet company that Diaghilev had made famous early in the twentieth century, and poured money into the opera (housed in a palace designed by Charles Garnier, architect of the Opéra de Paris) as well as the philharmonic orchestra. Monaco now spends eight percent of its budget on culture, with an emphasis on art exhibitions.

The town of Monte Carlo was an arid plain beneath mountains called the Spélugues when Prince Charles III came to power in 1856. But a man named François Blanc, who had run the casino of Homberg, also had a dream. Blanc talked the prince into expanding the original tiny casino to create the world's first resort town built around gaming. The railway opening to France had made that possible, and two years later the Spélugues became Monte Carlo, named after the prince. The royal family created the Société des Bains de Mer and gave Blanc a fifty-year concession to run it, along with a monopoly on gambling. In the twenties, Monaco was again a pioneer, hiring publicists to lure people to the Riviera when winter, not summer, was still the stylish season.

We are a long way from the days when, as dubious legend has it, the bodies of suicides impoverished by the roulette wheel were sent home free of charge to their luckless heirs in steamer trunks. Now, with the accession to the throne of Rainier's son, Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre, in his forties, the future is being carefully planned. Albert will be reclaiming sixty-five more acres from the sea, a tract of land on which will sit a world-class contemporary art museum. Housing in the quarter will be green, using photoelectric power and heat pumps. Following in the footsteps of his namesake Prince Albert I, a noted late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century oceanographer, the current Albert is being called Le Prince Écolo.