A little farther down the street, and still on the right hand side of the way, is a long wall. This shuts in the famous Giardinetto or Little Garden. It belonged to a house built by Charlotte de Grammont, wife of Prince Louis I, who left the Court of France and retired to Monaco in order to be near her daughter, who had taken the veil in the convent adjoining. This convent—the Convent of the Visitation—is a large, yellow, barrack-like building which occupies one side of the Place de la Visitation, having on the other side the Hôtel du Gouvernment. The convent was founded by Charlotte de Grammont in the middle of the seventeenth century and here her heart is buried. On the chapel—which is singularly plain—is an inscription to note that it was built in 1663 and restored in 1870.
The south-eastern extremity of the rock is occupied by the gardens of St. Martin, which were designed by Prince Honoré V in 1816 to give employment to the people during a year of dearth. These gardens are most enchanting. They occupy the edge of the cliff and even climb some little way down the side of the cliff by hesitating paths. They are represented by a maze of shady walks with, here and there, a terrace overhanging the sea or a sheltered look-out on a point of rock. It is a wild garden partly tamed, a wilderness where every path is made smooth. Its vegetation is partly Italian, partly African. Here are pine trees, olives and palms, with prickly pear, aloes and agave, pepper trees and mimosa, eucalyptus and the mastic bush, jasmine and myrtle, hedges of choisya, banks of rosemary, beds of violets and cascades of scarlet geranium. Below at the foot of the glowing cliff is the cool purple of the sea with a fringe of white foam to show where the rock and the waters meet.
Just beyond the Oceanographic Museum is a wide, paved platform on the brink of the cliff with parapet and sentry house. Beneath it is the Great Casemate built about 1709 to provide shelter for the people during bombardment and to accommodate a cistern for the storing of water when the outer world was cut off. This great underground “dug-out” is now used as a prison.
At the end of the garden is the rugged old fort built by Prince Antoine over 200 years ago. It is looking towards the casino of Monte Carlo, just as a toothless, old brigand might look at a dancing girl. It is a romantic spot with its winding stairs, its great gun embrasures, its mysterious doorways and its deserted sentry walk. It no longer bristles with armed men; it no longer thunders, with flashes of flame, across the sea; it no longer awakens an echo that shakes the astonished hills; for it is now a kind of “Celia’s Arbour,” a place of whispers where lovers meet and ruffle the silence with nothing more unquiet than a sigh.
| [32] | Published in Nice, 1907. |
| [33] | “Le Vieux Monaco.” |
| [34] | The present Casino at Monte Carlo was built in 1878. |
| [35] | Bosio. “Le Vieux Monaco.” |