The drive between Nice and Monaco covers barely thirty kilometres, yet it climbs through three separate corniche roads built across two thousand years. The lowest, the Basse Corniche, was cut in the 1860s. The Moyenne Corniche followed in 1928. The highest, the Grande Corniche, traces the Via Julia Augusta, the Roman road ordered by Augustus and still marked at La Turbie by the Trophée des Alpes, a monument raised in 6 BC to record the subjugation of forty-four Alpine tribes. Monaco itself occupies 2.08 square kilometres, making it the second-smallest sovereign state on earth. The Grimaldi family took the Rock in 1297, when François Grimaldi entered the fortress disguised as a Franciscan monk — an episode still recorded on the principality's coat of arms. The dynasty has held it, with interruptions, ever since. The Prince's Palace above Port Hercule remains an inhabited royal residence rather than a museum piece, and the Changing of the Guard occurs daily at 11:55 in the palace square. A nice to monaco private tour typically threads this history in a single itinerary, pairing the Rock with the terraced village of Èze, perched 427 metres above the sea. What gives the route its density is compression. Within an hour's driving lie the Belle Époque façade of the Casino de Monte-Carlo, completed by Charles Garnier in 1878 — the same architect responsible for the Paris Opera — and the Oceanographic Museum, founded by Prince Albert I in 1910 and directed by Jacques Cousteau for thirty-one years. Between them run the streets of the Circuit de Monaco, in use for the Grand Prix since 1929, where public roads become racetrack for one week each May. The Fontvieille district beneath them did not exist before the 1970s; it was reclaimed from the Mediterranean. Èze offers the counterweight. Its Jardin Exotique occupies the site of a medieval castle demolished in 1706 on the orders of Louis XIV, and the Chemin de Nietzsche descending toward Èze-sur-Mer commemorates the philosopher's walks there while composing part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Private Riviera excursions along this corridor exist because the coastline resists efficiency. Public transport reaches Monaco easily; it does not reach Èze village, La Turbie and the Grande Corniche viewpoints in the same movement. The value of a nice to monaco private tour lies in that stitching together — Roman road, medieval perched village and modern principality bound into one continuous line of coast.