Les Moneghetti, the district you cross without knowing it's there

Some districts you visit and some you pass through, and Les Moneghetti belongs firmly in the second group. If you arrive by train and head up towards the Exotic Garden, you’ll very likely cross it, and just as likely not notice. Here’s what it is, why hardly any guide mentions it and how to make it work for you without losing time.

The smallest of the eight

Monaco’s tourist board splits the country into eight districts, and Les Moneghetti is the smallest. IMSEE, the statistics office, gives it 11.5 hectares, against 43.7 for Monte-Carlo. The official 2013 division also has an even tinier reserved sector, the Ravin Sainte-Dévote at 2.3 hectares, which IMSEE folds into Les Moneghetti when it counts the population.

It sits on the northern slope, above the station and La Condamine, between the Exotic Garden district and Monte-Carlo. On maps it’s crossed by Boulevard de Belgique and Boulevard Rainier III, and at the top it runs into Beausoleil, which is already France. It’s a district of blocks of flats, schools and everyday shops, with nothing that resembles a sight.

Why would a visitor end up in Les Moneghetti?

I’ll be straight with you. If you’re in Monaco for a day or two, there’s no reason to look for this district on the map. It has no monuments, no museums and no named viewpoints, and the only facility with a familiar ring, the Stade des Moneghetti, isn’t open to visitors. The town hall says its artificial pitch and sports hall are used only by the Principality’s schools and sports clubs.

Even so, I think it’s worth knowing about for two reasons. The first is practical, because it’s the hinge between the station and the upper part of the country. The second is that it helps you see Monaco beyond the postcard. People who work here live here and do their shopping here, and in a place many picture as a casino-and-superyacht film set, that’s part of the trip too.

The lifts are the best thing about it

You get up and down Monaco by public lift. The government counts 79 of them, plus 35 escalators and 8 travelators, and publishes a leaflet, “Monaco Malin”, mapping them district by district. In Les Moneghetti it shows six lifts, an escalator and a travelator, nearly all of them clustered around the station. They’re in the table above, and the rest of the country is in my list of Monaco’s public lifts.

These are the two I’d actually use. The one from Place Sainte-Dévote up to Boulevard de Belgique, which lifts you from the Sainte-Dévote Church and the harbour without a single step, and the one from the station to the Pont Sainte-Dévote and Beausoleil, which puts you in the upper town in a minute. The leaflet dates from October 2019 and gives no hours, so I can’t promise every lift runs at midnight.

How it ties in with the railway station

Monaco’s railway station is underground, and each of its exits comes out in a different district. The Monte-Carlo exit, up on the Pont Sainte-Dévote, comes with a lift and also leads towards the Exotic Garden and the hospital, which is the route that crosses Les Moneghetti. If your plan is to head straight up to the Exotic Garden in Monaco or Villa Paloma off the train, this is your district to pass through.

If you’re heading for the harbour or the Rock, you want a different exit, La Condamine or Fontvieille. Which exit to take for where you’re going, plus buses and the harbour boat, is all in my guide to getting around Monaco.

A Moneghetti on each side of the border

This one amuses me. Beausoleil, the French town directly above, also has a district called Moneghetti, one of its three main districts along with the Centre and Ténao. So you can be in Moneghetti and in Monaco, or in Moneghetti and in France, and the street barely tells you which. There are no fixed checks between the two countries and you simply walk across.

If you’re staying several days and want lower prices, Beausoleil, the French town next to Monte-Carlo, is somewhere I’d look. It has around 14,000 residents and lives facing Monaco, with the casino a downhill stroll away.

My advice so you don’t waste time

One practical note for anyone arriving with luggage. The lifts are the whole point here, but the leaflet doesn’t say which ones take wheelchairs or pushchairs comfortably, and there’s no official list of opening hours. If you’re travelling with a heavy case late in the evening, I’d rather take bus or taxi than gamble on a lift being in service.

Treat Les Moneghetti as a corridor, not a destination. Ride its lifts up or down on your way to the Exotic Garden, Villa Paloma or the station, and spend the time you save on the Rock or Monte-Carlo. If you’d like to see how the country divides into districts, with the size and highlights of each, it’s all on my map of Monaco.