‘Everyone is rich, nobody cares': My weekend with Monaco's jet set
There is Monaco, and then there is Monaco.
Many of us have visited the former, sitting at wrought-iron tables on café terraces, strolling along the promenade, visiting the parts of the magnificent palace which are open to the public.
But while we are visiting the MAMAC museum and taking photos on Casino Square, a wholly separate Monaco is going on behind closed doors – on private rooftops, on balconies carefully shrouded from prying eyes by delicately manicured foliage, in clubs identifiable only by discreet plaques, and tucked away in the deepest recesses of Monte Carlo's hotels and casinos.
It is a world in which most of us are unlikely ever to find ourselves. Yes, it is a club into which you can buy (or marry) your way, as many have. But money will only take you so far: its eccentric upper reaches are reserved for a select few – a pack with if not necessarily blue, then at least purple, blood. And like the Four Hundred of erstwhile New York, this club is, for the most part, a closed shop.
On previous visits to Monaco, I had once or twice glimpsed this veiled world: the neatly preserved, white-haired women in tasteful tailored garb, watching haughtily from the top deck of the yacht club; aristocratically jawed gentlemen and shipping magnates smoking cigars on the balcony at the very back of the Casino de Monte Carlo.
I was fascinated by it, longing for a closer look – and reasoned there could be few better opportunities than during the Monaco Grand Prix, 'the jewel in Formula 1's crown' and – alongside the likes of the Yacht Show, the Tennis Masters and the lavish Bal de la Rose – a stalwart of the Principality's glittering social season. If I was going to experience Monaco's essence at its most distilled – to rub shoulders with incognito minor royals and 12th generation patricians – this was surely the place to do it.
My temporary access to this exclusive, elusive world came courtesy of British firm Go Privilege, one of a new and unusual breed of high-end concierge outfits which specialise in the sort of VIP gatherings I was keen to observe. They set me up with two of their Monaco packages – Friday aboard a trackside yacht (£1,000), and Sunday watching the Grand Prix itself from the terrace of Hotel Metropole's Yoshi, Monte Carlo's only Michelin-star Japanese restaurant (£3,495). It all felt too easy, as though someone had given me the secret password for some hidden back door.
I packed every outfit I owned that could be reasonably passed off as quiet luxury, and arrived in Monte Carlo as the F1 practice sessions were kicking off. I was immediately whisked to my first Go Privilege engagement: a swish all-day party aboard 37-metre superyacht Sea Bluez, moored feet from the track in Port Hercule, one of a neat row of similarly lavish tri-deck crafts.
A top-end tender zipped us across the port to its bow, weaving between other floating megaliths – on the right, Bernard Arnault's Symphony, with its helipad; on the left, Sir Philip Green's huge, sinuous Lionheart. Behind them, Monte Carlo's bizarrely beautiful patchwork of Belle Époque piles and incongruous high rises climbed towards the steep foothills of Mont Agel, its twisting streets and alleys crammed with people.
On board the yacht, champagne flowed, and glamorous people in dark glasses and delicately branded sportswear drifted between the aft deck and a table in the salon laid with chichi snacks. In the lulls between races, some retired to the sundeck, applying a sunscreen which doesn't officially exist yet from glass vials which waited on each table, as a DJ played waves of gently pulsing ambient mood music.
A woman in a candy-striped Gucci shirt hinted that there was at least one young aristocrat aboard the yacht moored beside us (a young Habsburg enjoying the fruits of their dynasty, perhaps?), and on the other side, two impeccably dressed men – one holding a tiny dog, the other wearing an Hermes cravat – watched inscrutably from a dining table on their promenade deck as Charles Leclerc's Ferrari buzzed by, 10 feet away.
Opposite, in the tiered plastic chairs of the viewing terraces, gently perspiring in racing caps and Brioni polos, sat the sort of spectators for whom a €2,000 day's ticket – almost twice the cost of my place on the yacht – had been an inconsequential expense. In any other context, they'd have been the VIPs – but here, they were the poor relation; literally on the wrong side of the track. It was aboard the yachts around us that the magnates and countesses lurked, nonchalantly sipping champagne against a backdrop of gleaming white boats and dark shimmering water.
'Important people have always come to Monte Carlo,' a distinguished elderly Frenchman told me, when we got chatting near the ceviche platter. 'For some it's about being seen, but for the really important ones, it's about not being seen. Here, everyone is rich – nobody cares. If you walk down the street, nobody bothers you.'
And then it was Sunday – race day – and I was meandering down the stately sunlit driveway of the Hotel Metropole, where a handful of cars had been given special permission to park. Some were merely expensive – but many others were custom made (the entirely baby pink Lamborghini Urus, for example), or officially non-existent (a brand shared by some of the cars on the track, for instance, but which is not currently known to produce SUVs).
All was calm and quiet, a world away from the maelstrom of surging bodies and hi-viz attired marshalls penned in by narrow streets and metal barriers. Inside Yoshi, the hotel's Japanese restaurant, another clutch of effortlessly glamorous people milled around, picking at finger food (nigiri, takoyaki, lobster rolls, choux buns), still sipping champagne, and intermittently strolling out onto the terrace.
I followed them, tottering up to the thick baroque balustrade. This, I'd been told, was one of Monaco's finest Grand Prix vantage points – but nothing could have prepared me for the reality of it. Barely five metres below was the track, stretching all the way to Casino Square corner on my right, and down into Mirabeau Haute, one of the circuit's most technically challenging bends (evidenced by its escape lane), to my left. As I gawped, the drivers' parade appeared on the crest of the hill; an open float carrying F1's golden boys, almost close enough to shake our hands.
While we waited for the main event, I chatted to evenly tanned people – including a woman in white linen whose cheekbones could only have been the result of carefully considered breeding – who introduced themselves with enigmatic ambiguity: 'I'm an entrepreneur'. 'I have a little business'.
I had expected there to be a great rush back to the balustrade when the Grand Prix itself began, but when the low-slung cars started to roar by – the smell of burnt rubber wafting up with every pass – I was surprised to note little change in tempo. People ambled out, watched a few laps, pointed to the car of Verstappen or Norris, then returned to the lacquered tables inside, which were now being laid with dessert.
'Don't you want to see?' I asked a stately 60-something gent – with slicked-back hair and an expression that suggested inherent satisfaction – as he disinterestedly sipped a tot of scotch.
'They go round; someone wins, someone loses. I've seen it before,' he replied, shrugging. 'Everyone here has seen it before.' He smiled and raised his glass. 'And now, so have you.'
I replayed his words in my mind later that night – as I ordered a sad sandwich at a countertop bar in Nice Airport and waited in vain for someone to top up my glass of warm wine. And it dawned on me: earlier that day, I had been the one on a private balcony, carefully shrouded from prying eyes by delicately manicured foliage. I had not just managed a closer look at the world of Monaco's elite – I had, briefly, been living in it.
It turns out that, if you know the password, getting through the hidden back door is the easy bit. The hard part – I realised, as a stale baguette arrived in front of me – is leaving it.
Gemma Knight-Gilani was a guest of Go Privilege, whose Monaco Grand Prix 2026 packages start at £895 per person per day (Yoshi terrace at Hotel Metropole) and £1,000 per person per day (superyacht viewing), including all food, drinks and VIP passes.
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