Museums
Oceanographic MuseumAvenue Saint-MartinMC 98000Monaco www.oceano.mc
His Serene Highness Albert I, Prince of Monaco, was surely one of the most useful royals of the past few centuries. Starting from the Grimaldi family's modest principality—the Rock and its surroundings cover less than a square mile of the Côte d'Azur—Albert found a novel way of expanding his domain: He became an oceanographer, one of the earliest. And on his Rock, flush with a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, he built the Oceanographic Museum to house all the weird and wonderful specimens that he collected until his death in 1922, at 73. Today the museum attracts a million visitors a year.
For most visitors the main attraction is probably the modern and perfectly charming aquarium that occupies one of the lower floors. Its centerpiece is a two-story tank containing a living coral reef. Between the coral columns, reef sharks and shovel-nosed rays lie on ...
