What consents are required for a full renovation in Monaco?

Applications are examined by an advisory committee, which rules with regard to the laws and regulations, the aesthetic conditions of the proposed work and its standing in the light of Monaco’s history. To this is added the building’s regulations, distinct from the administrative consent.

What determines how long a renovation takes in Monaco?

Three factors weigh more here than elsewhere: the examination of the file, the access slots negotiated with the managing agent for circulations shared with residents, and two ministerial orders of December 2018 governing site noise and hours.

Do you work with the project architect in Monaco?

It is a local obligation before it is a habit: the consent application must bear the signature of an architect registered with the Order of Architects of the Principality. We work to those drawings, as the single point of contact for every trade.

Expertise · Monaco

High-end renovation in Monaco

The complete transformation of a residence, orchestrated from A to Z under a single point of contact — the director. We bring this expertise to exceptional residences in Monaco, with the discretion and rigour for which we are known.

From Carré d’Or to Monte-Carlo, we work at the finest addresses in Monaco — a limited number of sites, carried through to perfection.

Renovating a prestige apartment in Monaco means orchestrating the standard of a grand hotel within a few hundred square metres: full strip-out, network renewal, home automation, thermal and acoustic upgrading — all within the building’s regulations.

Sole point of contact for both the managing agent and the client, the director coordinates every trade for a discreet, clean and controlled site — a prerequisite in the residences of the Carré d’Or and Monte-Carlo.

Complete renovation of an apartment in Monaco: what the building stock demands

The dominant private types in the Principality are the co-owned apartment, the top-floor penthouse and the pied-à-terre — not the detached house. A substantial share of that stock was built in the 1970s and 1980s, and its technical installations are now reaching the end of their cycle: taking a Monégasque residence back to the bone means, first of all, renewing networks that pass through shared floor slabs. On the Rock, Monaco-Ville is another matter altogether — narrow lanes, old masonry, houses some of which date back to the Renaissance. Belle Époque villas survive only in small numbers, on the heights.

The material constraint here comes down to one word: thickness. On an apartment floor plate, every centimetre taken by a screed, a lining or a suspended ceiling is paid for in ceiling height — and it is ceiling height that separates an accomplished work from an endured one. The second issue is acoustic: buildings of the 1960-1980 period perform below present-day expectations, in a fabric where dwellings adjoin on every face, above and below alike. The trade-off between sound insulation and available centimetres is therefore settled at survey stage, never at installation.

Building consent and building regulations: what frames the works

Town planning, construction and highways fall here under Sovereign Ordinance no. 3.647 of 9 September 1966, as amended, supplemented by Sovereign Ordinance no. 4.482 of 13 September 2013 for the sector of the ordered quarters. An application for consent to build or to demolish must be signed by an architect on the roll of the Order of Architects of the Principality; it is examined by the Direction de la Prospective, de l’Urbanisme et de la Mobilité. Applications go before an advisory committee, which rules with regard to the laws and regulations, the aesthetic qualities of the proposed work, the general interest, and how the work reads against the history of Monaco.

A protection specific to the building stock is added to that: the Principality maintains an inventory of some one hundred and ten buildings and forty-one remarkable façades, the designation « remarkable building » being the most demanding degree where alteration or demolition-and-rebuilding is concerned. Then comes a second layer, distinct from the administrative consent: the building’s own regulations and its managing agent, which set working hours, the protection of common parts and the booking of access. Two ministerial orders published in December 2018 further govern site noise and working hours, with the declared purpose of quality of life in the Principality.

Duration, sequencing and quarters: running a renovation in the Principality

The territory covers some two square kilometres, entirely built up: there is virtually no space available for site accommodation, for storing materials or for turning a vehicle. Everything entering and leaving a site on an upper floor passes through the common circulation — lift, goods lift, stairwells — shared with residents. Sequencing is therefore built around fractioned deliveries. From one quarter to the next the work changes in kind: homogeneous stock on reclaimed ground at Fontvieille, tower blocks of the expansion years at La Rousse, façades exposed to spray along the Larvotto seafront, the most sought-after addresses around the Carré d’Or.

A complete renovation is never an isolated craft: it calls on structural and general building work when a shear wall has to be opened without touching a shared slab, on bespoke finishes and interiors when materials are set to the available centimetre, on extensions and villa fit-outs when a loggia or a terrace enters the brief. The director remains the single point of contact for client and managing agent alike, from the first survey to the clearing of snags. Our area-served page for the Principality brings these four crafts together.