Monaco facts, ranked by how much they surprise, and where the money comes from

Monaco is a country made of exceptions, and almost all of them stem from the same problem, very little space and very few inhabitants. Here are my favourite facts ranked by how much they surprise, with the official figure alongside, plus the question people ask most about the place, where all the money comes from. What has no reliable source, such as millionaire rankings, I leave out and tell you why. If you are going, the practical side is in my Monaco travel guide.

A country you can walk across that grows into the sea

At 2.08 km², only Vatican City is smaller among the world’s states. Monaco measures 3,344 metres end to end and 1,140 across at the broadest point, and all of its land border is with France. For a country like that, the only way to grow has been into the sea. In 1861 it covered 145 hectares, and by 2005 that had reached 202, thanks to Rainier III’s land reclamation. Fontvieille alone added 220,000 m², with infill thirty to forty metres deep.

The latest addition is Mareterra, a whole district reclaimed from the sea and inaugurated on 4 December 2024, with 27,000 m² of green space and 800 trees. To me it is the fact that best explains Monaco, because it shows that here the ground itself is manufactured. Where each district sits is on the map of Monaco.

Few Monegasques, plenty of neighbours and even more cars

Of the 38,857 residents in 2025, only 9,333 were Monegasque, 24%. Even so, no other nationality outnumbers them, and worldwide they do not reach ten thousand. For comparison, Britons are the fourth-largest group, with 3,081. The Monegasques live long lives, too. Life expectancy for Monegasque nationals over 2023-2025 was 88.5 years, but bear in mind that is for nationals, not everyone who lives there.

The figure I enjoy most is the one about cars. In 2025 there were 52,882 vehicles registered in Monaco (the system behind them is in Monaco number plates), more than there are residents, and that is before counting the thousands that drive in from France every day. With a density of around 18,700 people per km², the World Bank places it among the most crowded territories on the planet, and in my comparison only Macau came out higher, and Macau is not a state.

The casino its owners cannot play in

This is my favourite. The Monte-Carlo Casino is the business that got the country back on its feet in the nineteenth century, and its rules forbid Monegasques from gambling. The same goes for civil servants and public employees, and for staff of the SBM, the company that operates it. The ban even covers playing through someone else.

For the rest of the world the rules are different. You must be an adult and show a passport or photo ID card to get into the gaming rooms. If you only want to see it, in the morning it can be visited as a monument. Hours and rules for the Monte-Carlo Casino have their own page.

State oddities you would not expect

France has guaranteed the country’s defence since the 2002 treaty, and Monaco keeps no troops of its own for it. Its only military unit is the 125-strong Company of the Prince’s Carabiniers, the soldiers who perform the daily changing of the guard at 11:55. Police officers, on the other hand, it has plenty of. The Public Security Department had 556 in 2025, which works out at one for every seventy residents. That is my own sum and ignores the thousands of workers and tourists who come in daily, so do not use it to claim this is the most policed country in the world, because no source compares it.

There is more. The post is handled by the French administration, but the stamps are issued by Monaco, an arrangement its own philatelic office calls unique. Monaco joined the UN in 1993, after nearly forty years as an observer. And on 28 March 2026 it welcomed Leo XIV, the first apostolic journey by a pope to the Principality in modern times. Before him, Paul III, in 1538, was the last pontiff to set foot on the Rock. Another oddity of so small a state is that it has a single jail, and I cover it in Monaco’s prison.

Why is Monaco so rich?

Here it pays to separate what is documented from what gets repeated. The documented part begins in 1861. After losing Menton and Roquebrune, the country was left without most of its territory, and Charles III looked for income in sea bathing and gambling. In 1863 the casino passed to François Blanc, and his company was contractually bound to take care of water and gas, roads, transport links with Nice and Menton, and even the publication of an official gazette. In other words, the gambling business carried works and services that elsewhere the state would have paid for. I tell it at more length in the history of Monaco.

The second piece is tax. In 1869 inhabitants were exempted from land, personal and property contributions and from the business licence tax. Since 1963, after the crisis with de Gaulle, French citizens living in Monaco pay as if they lived in France. And beware the cliché, because Monaco is not tax free, as I explain in tax in Monaco. There is VAT, charged on the same basis as in France, a corporate profits tax, and registration and inheritance duties.

The third is jobs. In 2025, 65,117 people were employed in Monaco, far more than live there, because many travel in every day from outside the country. Add 13 hotels with 353,875 arrivals in the year and a calendar of events led by the Grand Prix, and you have a country that draws money from outside with very few residents to share it among.

What I will not give you is GDP per head or a count of millionaires, because I have not found either in an official source or a serious secondary one. I would rather leave you without a figure than with an invented one.