Larvotto

Larvotto is on the eastern side of Monaco, below the Monte-Carlo district, and is the principality's only public beach. Monaco has around two kilometres of coastline in total and almost none of it was naturally a beach; Larvotto was created on reclaimed land in the 1960s and entirely rebuilt between 2019 and 2021.

The reconstruction is the interesting part. The old beach was pebble on an artificial platform with ageing breakwaters; the new one has a reprofiled shore, new submerged breakwaters designed to hold sediment and improve water circulation, restored posidonia seagrass beds offshore, and a promenade behind. It cost a great deal for six hundred metres of beach, in a country where land is the scarcest commodity there is.

The shore is fine pebble and coarse sand, with clear, calm, deep-shelving water inside the breakwaters. The Mediterranean here is warm from June to October. A marine reserve lies immediately offshore — Monaco protected these waters in 1976 — and the posidonia beds within it are among the better-monitored in the Mediterranean.

Development is Monaco: apartment towers behind, restaurants and private beach clubs along the promenade, and a free public section that is genuinely free and genuinely used. The whole beach is a few minutes' walk from the casino. Monaco's other water is the Piscine du Port Hercule, an outdoor seawater pool that becomes an ice rink in winter, and between the two the principality manages to offer public swimming on a coastline with essentially no natural shore.

Six hundred metres of beach in a country with two kilometres of coast, rebuilt between 2019 and 2021 with submerged breakwaters and replanted seagrass. It is pebble, not sand. The marine reserve offshore has been protected since 1976, which is earlier than most of the Mediterranean managed. The Piscine du Port Hercule down the hill becomes an ice rink in winter, which is the principality's other answer to having almost no coast.