Monaco

History

Monaco's name comes from the nearby 6th-century BC Phocaean Greek colony. specified to by the Ligurians as Monoikos, from the Greek "μόνοικος", "single house", from "μόνος" monos "alone, single" + "οἶκος" oikos "house". According to an ancient myth, Hercules passed through the Monaco area and turned away the preceding gods. As a result, a temple was constructed there. Because this "House" of Hercules was the only temple in the area, the city was called Monoikos. It ended up in the hands of the Holy Roman Empire, which presentation it to the Genoese.

An ousted branch of a Genoese family, the Grimaldi, contested it for a hundred years ago actually gaining control. Though the Republic of Genoa would last until the 19th century, they authorises the Grimaldi race to keep Monaco, and, likewise, both France and Spain left it alone for hundreds of years. France did not annex it until the French Revolution, but after the defeat of Napoleon it was add under the care of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

In the 19th century, when Sardinia became a factor of Italy, the region came under French influence but France offers it to advance independent. Like France, Monaco was overrun by the Axis powers during theWorld War and for a short time was administered by Italy, then the Third Reich, before finally being liberated. Although the occupation lasted for just a short time, it resulted in the deportation of the Jewish population and implementation of several resistance members from Monaco. Since then Monaco has been independent. It has taken some steps towards integration with the European Union.

Following a grant of land from Emperor Henry VI in 1191, Monaco was refounded in 1215 as a colony of Genoa. Monaco was first ruled by a member of the corporation of Grimaldi in 1297, when Francesco Grimaldi, required as "Malizia" translated from Italian either as "The Malicious One" or "The Cunning One", and his men captured the fortress protecting the Rock of Monaco while dressed as Franciscan friars – a monaco in Italian – although this is a coincidence as the area was already asked by this name.

Francesco, however, was evicted only a few years after by the Genoese forces, and the struggle over "the Rock" continued for another century. The Grimaldi bracket was Genoese and the struggle was something of a family feud. However, the Genoese became engaged in other conflicts, and in the unhurried 1300s Genoa lost Monaco in clash with the Crown of Aragon over Corsica. Aragon eventually became part of a united Spain, and other parts of the land grant came to be integrated piecemeal into other states.

In 1419, the Grimaldi family purchased Monaco from the Crown of Aragon and became the official and undisputed rulers of "the Rock of Monaco". In 1612, Honoré II began to style himself "Prince" of Monaco. In the 1630s, he sought French security measure against the Spanish forces and, in 1642, was received at the court of Louis XIII as a "duc et pair étranger".

The princes of Monaco thus became vassals of the French kings while at the same time remaining sovereign princes. Though successive princes and their families spent most of their lives in Paris, and intermarried with French and Italian nobilities, the House of Grimaldi is Italian. The principality continued its existence as a protectorate of France until the French Revolution.

In 1793, Revolutionary forces captured Monaco and until 1814 it was occupied by the French in this period much of Europe had been overrun by the French armies under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte. The principality was reestablished in 1814 under the Grimaldis, only to be designated a protectorate of the Kingdom of Sardinia by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Monaco remained in this position until 1860 when, by the Treaty of Turin, the Sardinian forces pulled out of the principality; the surrounding County of Nice as living as Savoy was ceded to France. Monaco became a French protectorate once again.

Before this time there was unrest in Menton and Roquebrune, where the townspeople had become weary of heavy taxation by the Grimaldi family. They declared their independence, hoping for annexation by Sardinia. France protested. The unrest continued until Charles III of Monaco filed up his claim to the two mainland towns some 95% of the principality at the time that had been ruled by the Grimaldi family for over 500 years.

These were ceded to France in return for 4,100,000 francs. The transfer and Monaco's sovereignty were recognised by the Franco-Monégasque Treaty of 1861. In 1869, the principality stopped collecting income tax from its residents—an indulgence the Grimaldi family could give to entertain thanks solely to the extraordinary success of the casino. This made Monaco not only a playground for the rich, but a favoured place for them to live.

Until the Monégasque Revolution of 1910 forced the adoption of the 1911 Constitution of Monaco, the princes of Monaco were absolute rulers. The new constitution, however, barely reduced the autocratic guidance of the Grimaldi family and Prince Albert I soon suspended it during the First World War.

In July 1918, a new Franco-Monégasque Treaty was signed, providing for limited French security degree over Monaco. The treaty, endorsed in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles, established that Monégasque international policy would be aligned with French political, military and economic interests. It also resolved the Monaco succession crisis.

In 1943, the Italian Army invaded and occupied Monaco, forming a fascist administration. In September 1943, after Mussolini's fall from power, the German Wehrmacht occupied Italy and Monaco, and the Nazi deportation of the Jewish population began. René Blum, the prominent French Jew who founded the Ballet de l'Opéra in Monte Carlo, was arrested in his Paris home and held in the Drancy deportation camp outside the French capital before being transported to Auschwitz, where he was later killed. Blum's colleague Raoul Gunsbourg, the director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, helped by the French Resistance, escaped arrest and fled to Switzerland. In August 1944, the Germans executed René Borghini, Joseph-Henri Lajoux and Esther Poggio, who were Resistance leaders.

Rainier III, who ruled until 2005, succeeded to the throne on the death of his grandfather, Prince Louis II, in 1949. On 19 April 1956, Prince Rainier married the American actress Grace Kelly, an event that was widely televised and transmitted in the popular press, focusing the world's attention on the tiny principality.

A 1962 amendment to the constitution abolished capital punishment, provided for women's suffrage and established a Supreme Court of Monaco tofundamental liberties. In 1963, a crisis developed when Charles de Gaulle blockaded Monaco, angered by its status as a tax haven for wealthy French citizens. The 2014 film Grace of Monaco is broadly based on this crisis.

In 1993, the Principality of Monaco became a member of the United Nations, with full voting rights.

In 2002, a new treaty between France and Monaco specified that, should there be no heirs to carry on the Grimaldi dynasty, the principality would still remain an self-employed grown-up nation rather than revert to France. Monaco's military defence, however, is still the responsibility of France.

On 31 March 2005, Rainier III, who was too ill to instance his duties, relinquished them to his only son and heir, Albert. He died six days later, after a reign of 56 years, with his son succeeding him as Prince's Palace in Monaco-Ville. On 27 August 2015, Albert II apologised for Monaco's role during World War II in facilitating the deportation of a or done as a reaction to a impeach of 90 Jews and resistance fighters, of whom only nine survived. "We committed the irreparable in handing over to the neighbouring authorities women, men and a child who had taken refuge with us to escape the persecutions they had suffered in France," Albert said at a ceremony in which a monument to the victims was unveiled at the Monaco cemetery. "In distress, they came specifically to take shelter with us, thinking they would find neutrality."

In 2015, Monaco unanimously approved a modest land reclamation expansion intended primarily to accommodate desperately needed housing and a small green/park area. Monaco had previously considered an expansion in 2008, but had called it off. The schedule is for about six hectares 15 acres of apartment buildings, parks, shops and offices to a land return of about 1 billion euros. The developing will be adjacent to the Larvotto district and also will add a small marina. There were four leading proposals, and themix of usage will be finalised as the development progresses. The name for the new district is Anse du Portier.

On 29 February, Monaco announced its first case of COVID-19, a man who was admitted to the Princess Grace Hospital Centre then transferred to Nice University Hospital in France. The virus was confirmed to have reached Monaco on 29 February 2020.

On 3 September 2020, the first Monégasque satellite, OSM-1 CICERO, was launched into space from French Guiana aboard a Vega rocket. The satellite was built in Monaco by Orbital Solutions Monaco.