A gigantic construction project on the sea, including luxury housing and public spaces, has emerged in Monaco to allow the principality to expand. But the loss of biodiversity due to this artificialization of the seabed is strongly criticized.
Prince Albert II of Monaco inaugurated the new Mareterra district this Wednesday, a huge real estate operation which has allowed the small Mediterranean principality to encroach on six hectares of land on the sea.
“This extension at sea will be a symbol, it embodies my vision, that of a principality which dares, which embraces audacity, which controls its destiny with wisdom, which knows how to listen to the environment,” declared the sovereign, surrounded by his family and actors in this project worth more than two billion euros launched in 2015.
After his speech, the prince surveyed the new, tree-filled district, from the “Princess Gabriella square” or the “Prince Jacques promenade” to the “Princess Charlène swimming pool”, named in reference to his two children and his wife, former South African swimming champion.
Wednesday evening, all those involved in the project, workers, craftsmen, architects, are invited to a private evening with a concert, aerial drone ballet and fireworks.
“Marine biodiversity has been massacred”
Cramped over two square kilometers between the sea and the mountains, Monaco had already gained 40 hectares from the sea since the 1950s. But this project has no equivalent, even in the Middle East, given the depth of the structure, which descends up to 50 meters, and seismic or environmental constraints.
Before carrying out this work, the project leaders explain that they moved the marine species, and in particular 500 m² of Posidonia Oceanica, a protected species of sea grass. They also boast, on their site, of having put the maintenance of the ecosystem and the preservation of the environment at the heart of their priorities.
However, marine biologist Alexandre Meinesz denounces “an amputation of the marine environment”.
“Marine biodiversity has been massacred. We cannot compensate for 60,000 m² of shallow waters which have been covered. These biotopes, with many species, are destroyed forever. The small environments will not be recreated,” laments this researcher. at the Ecoseas laboratory of the University of Côte-d'Azur, with Liberation.
120 spacious apartments and 10 villas
Led by the company Anse du Portier, which essentially brings together around ten families with powerful names in Monaco such as Pastor, Brianti or Casiraghi, the project has provided technical resources and focused on luxury and space, aimed at the handful of the ultra-rich who will be able to live there and the many visitors expected.
The site is supported by 18 enormous concrete caissons demarcating a new coastline. The dry space inside was then filled with sand and consolidated with more than a thousand large piles 45 meters high.
On this land, the new district entrusted to the Valode et Pistre Architectes firm, in partnership with, among others, the Italian architect Renzo Piano, includes 120 spacious, even immense, apartments and ten exceptional villas.
According to a government source in 2023, prices went up to 120,000 euros per square meter, an amount that Guy-Thomas Levy-Soussan, managing director of Anse du Portier, described in the spring as “optimistic”, while recognizing “a big commercial success”.
