Monaco

Monaco is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera in Western Europe, bordered by France on three sides and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. At 2.08 square kilometers and about 38,400 residents, it is the second smallest sovereign state in the world after Vatican City and the most densely populated. The House of Grimaldi has ruled Monaco since 1297, when Francesco Grimaldi seized the fortress disguised as a Franciscan friar, and the principality's sovereignty was formally recognized under the Franco-Monegasque Treaty of 1861. It operates as a unitary parliamentary semi-constitutional monarchy, with Prince Albert II as head of state holding substantial political powers and a Minister of State as head of government; Monaco joined the United Nations as a voting member in 1993. Its modern prosperity dates to the opening of the Monte Carlo Casino in the late nineteenth century and the rail connections that followed, and it functions today as a major banking center and tax haven with no personal income tax for residents, over thirty percent of whom are millionaires.