Moneghetti

Moneghetti is the north-western hillside, the smallest of Monaco's seven official wards — 11.5 hectares by IMSEE's count. It is not laid out as a grid. The roads follow the contours: Boulevard Rainier III at the bottom, Boulevard de Belgique in the middle, Boulevard du Jardin Exotique along the top. Moving between them is done on foot, by staircase and by public lift.

Above, the land border with Beausoleil; below, the Ravin de Sainte-Dévote and La Condamine. The ward belongs to the traditional Condamine quarter and still faces it. Most of what a resident does daily happens one or two terraces down, and the way back up is a lift or a long flight of steps.

The stock is mixed vertically rather than street by street. A Belle Époque layer runs through it — stucco and ceramic frontages, turrets, loggias, small villas — including the Villa Ispahan on Boulevard du Jardin Exotique, with its blue minarets and mosaic work. Above and around sit later blocks stepping down the slope, plus a few recent residences. Plots are small, frontages narrow. A block is often entered at ground level from one boulevard and several storeys up from the street below, so floor number and view are loosely related here.

Around Square Lamarck sit a post office on Chemin de la Turbie and, a short walk on, the Église du Sacré-Cœur. The Théâtre des Muses is further along Boulevard du Jardin Exotique. Just over the ward line, at the even-numbered end of that boulevard, Parc Princesse Antoinette has olive trees, a children's garden, mini-golf, an omnisports court and a small farm with goats and rabbits. For shops and the covered market you go down to La Condamine.

It suits people who want a residential address within walking distance of the port and accept arriving home by lift. That dependence is the trade-off: the cross-slope links are machines, they can be out of service for long stretches when they are refurbished, and the fallback is a staircase. Frontage flats on Boulevard du Jardin Exotique and Boulevard Rainier III carry through-traffic noise. Check too that the postal address reads 98000 Monaco — Beausoleil has its own Boulevard des Moneghetti.