page_title: Monaco
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Monaco / History / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: The Mayor of Monaco announces Prince Albert's concessions to the people.
context_page_description: Monaco, officially the Principality of Monaco, is a sovereign city-state, country, and microstate on the French Riviera in Western Europe. It is bordered by France to the north, east and west, and by the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The principality is home to 38,682 residents and is widely recognised for being one of the most expensive and wealthiest places in the world. The official language is French, although Monégasque, English and Italian are spoken and understood by a sizeable group.
  With an area of 2.1 km², it is one of the smallest sovereign states in Europe and the second-smallest in the world, after the Vatican City. Its 19,009 inhabitants per square kilometre, make it the most densely-populated sovereign state in the world. Monaco has a land border of 5.47 km, the world's shortest coastline of approximately 3.83 km, and a width that varies between 1,700 and 349 m. The highest point in the country is a narrow pathway named Chemin des Révoires on the slopes of Mont Agel, in the Les Révoires Ward, which is 161 metres above sea level. The principality is about 15 km from the state border with Italy.
context_section_description: Until the Monegasque Revolution of 1910 forced the adoption of the 1911 constitution, the princes of Monaco were absolute rulers. The new constitution, however, barely reduced the autocratic rule of the Grimaldi family and Prince Albert I soon suspended it during the First World War.
  In July 1918, the Franco-Monegasque Treaty was signed, providing for limited French protection over Monaco. The treaty, endorsed in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles, established that Monegasque international policy would be aligned with French political, military, and economic interests, and resolved the Monaco Succession Crisis.
  In November 1942, the Italian Army invaded and occupied Monaco, forming a fascist administration.In September 1943, following the collapse of Mussolini, the German Wehrmacht occupied Monaco and the Nazi deportation of the Jewish population began. René Blum, the prominent French Jew who founded the Ballet de l'Opera in Monte Carlo, was arrested in his Paris home and held in the Drancy deportation camp outside the French capital before being transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, 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 following the death of his grandfather, Prince Louis II, in 1949. On 19 April 1956, Prince Rainier married the American actress Grace Kelly; the event was widely televised and covered 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 to guarantee fundamental liberties.
  In 1963, a crisis developed when Charles de Gaulle blockaded Monaco, angered by its status as a tax haven for wealthy French. The 2014 film Grace of Monaco is loosely based on this crisis.
  In 1993, the Principality of Monaco became a member of the United Nations, with full voting rights.
caption: The mayor of Monaco announcing concessions, ending the absolute monarchy of Prince Albert I in 1910
exif: {}