Travel: Monaco

And that sense of style is synonymous with Princess Grace, who is to be found everywhere in the principality. I know she died in 1982 but, trust me, she lives on in so many ways. There is the Princess Grace trail, which will show you around what is the second smallest independent state in the world (only Vatican City is smaller) and includes the Princess Grace Rose Garden, the Japanese Garden off the Avenue Princess Grace, the Princess Hospital Centre, the Palace, the cathedral where she was married, and tell you about her work in founding AMADE, the international charity to help children.

British interest in her has soared because of the exhibition of her clothing at the Victoria & Albert museum in London. In three parts – the actress, the bride and the princess – the exhibition features couture outfits from Christian Dior, Yves St Laurent, Balenciaga and Givenchy, the Hermes bag created for her, now universally known as the Kelly bag, together with the dress she wore at her first meeting with Prince Rainier in Monaco.

This was not, as popularly supposed, a couture dress, but something conjured from a McCall's "easy to sew" pattern, which may give you a hint of the woman.

The exhibition runs until 26 September, and there has been some criticism that some of the clothing looks, well, "worn". That is the point; these are the clothes of a stylish woman who would use couture and McCall's, and was not extravagant.

Her influence, and stories of her, are everywhere in Monaco, for the Monegasques seem genuinely fond of her and the family. France, which bounds the principality on three sides, has long wanted to absorb it, but the family are the buffer against this, because as long as there is an heir to Monaco it cannot become part of France.

And little Monaco packs a lot into its two square kilometre territory. The royal palace itself is up on the rock, and it must have seemed like a fairytale palace in 1956, when Grace Kelly became Princess Grace of Monaco. It must also have been sweet revenge for her family; of Irish immigrant stock, and with her father a self-made millionaire, they were nevertheless not accepted into Philadelphia high society because they were Irish Catholics. Being Catholic proved to be a plus, though, when marrying into the Grimaldi family.

Also most welcome to the Principality was the 2 million dowry paid by her family. That, and the subsequent reinvention and rebranding of Monaco, is part of her legacy today.

Now, the Riviera sun still shines on Monaco, and there are some wonderful, and expensive, high-style hotels, the casino and events such as the rally and tennis masters, but the business of Monaco today is business. There are international banks, private banks, investment companies and, very obviously, money in the streets.

It is a tax haven, and possibly the safest place in the world for, per capita, they have the largest police force in the world. Housing is hugely expensive, and when we stepped on to a pedestrian crossing, a Bentley and a Rolls-Royce stopped to allow us to cross. There are all the best motor dealers here – not just Mercedes, but Maybach too. Fauchon, the Parisian grocery, is in one of the shopping arcades, and there is every fashion designer you can think of represented here.

There are restaurants, too, and hotels catering for all levels of visitors, including the typical Monegasque mix of French and Italian dishes, but it is the high end that people associate with the names of Monaco and Monte Carlo. These include the combination of Japanese and western cuisines at Yoshi in the Hotel Metropole, where bento boxes provide a reasonably priced lunch in a Joel Robuchon restaurant; Thai cuisine at Maya Bay Thai; or, for the very best of three-star Michelin cuisine, lunch at the Alain Ducasse restaurant Louis XV in the Hotel de Paris.

This was a sublime lunch in a spectacular gilded setting, and restaurant as theatre, with bread trolley, champagne trolley, cheese trolley and even a coffee trolley with sugar, chocolate marshmallows, nougat and madeleines as well as chocolate petit fours.

There was an a la carte menu, but the set menus ranged from 140 (120) to twice that. There were some obvious business lunches going on, and I identified a couple of romantic lunches, but mainly there were family celebrations – a 70th birthday with two daughters treating their parents, and other apparent "treats" in this very grand restaurant.

We were especially privileged, because before lunch we had been allowed into the wine cellars of the Hotel de Paris, said to be the finest hotel cellar in the world. What is certain is that they have over 600,000 bottles here, including a brandy dating from 1800. We were shown the deepest, oldest part, where the Hotel de Paris hid and saved its finest wines, silver and paintings from the Germans during the occupation, and where Prince Rainier arranged a 25th wedding anniversary surprise dinner for Princess Grace in 1981.

But Monaco today is not all old-style grandeur – we found lively bars and restaurants on the harbour, such as Zest, and the latest exhibition at the Oceanographic Museum is of works by Damien Hirst. Here his sheep, butterfly and, most popular of all, his shark, compete with the real thing in the vast aquariums down below. London gets Princess Grace and Monaco gets Damien Hirst, and the world gets more interesting.

Fact file

For information on Monaco go to www.visitmonaco.com. Easyjet (www.easyjet.com) flies from Edinburgh to Nice from 80 return with speedy boarding at a small extra charge. Rooms at the Meridien Beach Plaza from 289 (240) bed and breakfast, but see www.lemeridien.com/montecarlo for offers and packages.

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday July 4, 2010