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Event Information:
On
November 19th, Monaco celebrates its
National Holiday with spectacular
fireworks over the harbor the
evening before and a mass in the
Cathedral the next morning. An
excellent opportunity to see the
pomp and circumstance of the
Principality, visitors can see the
Knights of Malta, distinguished
ambassadors, consuls and state
officials decked out in medal-laden
uniforms as they congregate in the
Place St. Nicholas after the mass.
Then it is off to the Prince’s
Palace where onlookers can see the
Princely family wave to the crowd
from the windows of the palace.
The
Monaco International Fireworks
Festival attracts thousands to view
some beautiful, original and noisy
displays. The competition has been
held since 1966 and invites
pyrotechnic specialists from
countries around the world to show
their talent in Port Hercule. The
competition, which starts in July,
continues through the month of
August, and the winner returns on 18
November to create the fireworks
displays on the evening before
Monaco's national holiday.
Until
the Monegasque Revolution of 1910
forced the adoption of the 1911
constitution, the princes of Monaco
were absolute rulers. The long
over-due constitution, however,
barely reduced the autocratic rule
by the Grimaldis and Albert I soon
suspended it. 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
1943, the Italian army invaded and
occupied Monaco, setting up a
Fascist administration. Shortly
thereafter, following Mussolini's
collapse in Italy, the Nazi German
Wehrmacht occupied Monaco and began
the deportation of the Jewish
population. René Blum (Paris, 13
March 1878 – Auschwitz, 30 April
1943), 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 Paris,
whence he was then transported to
the Auschwitz concentration camp,
where he was killed. Blum's
colleague Raoul Gunsbourg, the
director of the Opéra de
Monte-Carlo, was helped by the
French Resistance to escape arrest
and flee to Switzerland.
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