Casino Square, Monaco's priciest shop window, and it costs nothing to look

If Monaco had an official photograph, it would be taken here. Casino Square packs Garnier’s building, the country’s most famous hotel, a café terrace with a century and a half behind it and a giant mirror reflecting the lot into a few dozen metres. Best of all, it costs nothing. Here’s what to look at, when to come and where the catch is.

One square, four famous buildings

The star is the Casino, with the Monte-Carlo Opera, the Salle Garnier, in the same complex. On one side stands the Hôtel de Paris, opened in 1864, with its domed corner and Le Louis XV inside. Opposite is the Café de Paris, which the SBM calls the heart of Monaco for 150 years, open daily from 08:00 to 01:00. In the same building is the Casino Café de Paris, the slot hall, with around 480 machines and two open-air terraces.

The Casino’s interior is a different story, and a paid one, which I cover with hours and dress code in visiting Monte-Carlo Casino. Here I’m staying outside, which is where the square is free and, to my mind, at its most enjoyable.

The mirror, the busts and the open-air art

In the centre sits Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror, a vast concave mirror that catches the light and throws back the sky and the façades. I think it’s the best thing anyone has done to the square, because it makes you look twice at what you thought you knew. Walk right round it and you’ll see the whole square flipped and stretched in its curve. It’s part of the Chemin des Sculptures Rainier III, the trail of more than 200 sculptures around Monaco that I explain in the Monaco sculpture trail.

There’s more around it, if quieter. Three bronze heads, Massenet, Berlioz and Diaghilev, are a nod to the composers and the impresario who made the Opera famous around 1900, and behind the building come works by Botero and Valdés. Lean over the terraces facing the sea and you’ll spot Vasarely’s Hexa Grace, a geometric mosaic laid across the auditorium roof below.

The gardens framing the Casino

The square makes no sense without its gardens, laid out in 1893 by the landscape architect Édouard André for Prince Charles III. The idea was an eternal spring for the Riviera’s winter visitors. To the east is the Petite Afrique, tropical, with Moreton Bay figs and ginkgos, and to the west the Boulingrins, a name borrowed from the English bowling greens, more formal, with lawns, beds and palms.

The Boulingrins were recently reworked by Michel Desvigne from the original plans, and their upper terraces give you the Casino photo with flowers in front. At Christmas an old carousel goes up there. All of the country’s gardens, in order, are in Monaco’s gardens and parks.

Supercars and the Grand Prix

The square also doubles as a very photographed car park. Between the Casino steps and the hotel entrance, cars you’d normally only see at motor shows pull up every day, and staring is free. If you want to go deeper, May brings the supercar show I describe in Top Marques Monaco.

Once a year the square turns into a track. The Grand Prix circuit climbs from Sainte Dévote and crosses it, and Grandstand B goes up here. A Sunday seat in 2027 costs €1,050, and €1,150 in the B-GOLD section. The rest of the year you can walk it bend by bend, as I explain in the Monaco circuit.

The catch, and how I’d do it

The catch is the bill, not the square. The terraces on Place du Casino charge for the view, which is fair enough, so I’d sit down once, without hurrying, and do the rest standing. The other classic mistake is turning up mid-afternoon expecting to tour the Casino in shorts, when the morning is the time for that.

My plan would be this. Arrive at ten, take the Casino’s morning tour, step out into the Boulingrins for the photo and wander down to the terrace over the sea. Then come back after dark, when the façades light up and the cars start arriving. At Christmas it’s worth a third visit, because the gardens are lit up and the old carousel turns in the Boulingrins, with the floodlit Casino behind. The wider district, with its shops and hotels, is in Monte-Carlo, what to see.