Pierre Casiraghi

“I’m quite pissed off with most yacht designers. I don’t understand what the hell they’re doing. No one is reinventing anything. No one is trying to think outside the box. We have completely forgotten what being on a boat is about. It’s about being on the sea, it’s not about being in an apartment. All these new superyachts are all about interior space, covered decks and you’re so far from the water, which means going for a swim, which should be your primary thought, requires you to go down an elevator three floors. I don’t understand it.”

“Prince Albert has definitely set Monaco on a sports path and I think that’s amazing. So many sportspeople live here and it’s not just for tax reasons. If you go to the stadium, you have every sport from fencing, swimming, diving, boxing, you name it. All the track and field.”

“I like climbing. I go skydiving. I’m a dive instructor for scuba diving. I love to be outside in the forest trekking. I do a lot of horse riding. I like to play football. I do a lot of boxing. You can drive 40 minutes towards Ventimiglia and you have amazing canyoning.”

“Sailing is an escape, it’s an adventure. As I kid I was always reading books about adventure, about being outside. It was always something I wanted to do and the first time I went sailing on my own, or went out with a friend, it was just freedom. No one could come and tell me, ‘Go there,’ or ‘Do this.’ It felt like a mini adventure just for me.”

“Poor William and Harry! I mean, listen, it’s very difficult to compare us. Great Britain is a very big place with a lot of people; we come from a very small place with different traditions. But they also deserve their privacy.”

“If you imagine Monaco at the beginning of the 20th century, it was a really small town which had the elite coming in the winter and the rest of the year it was just fishermen and some little hotels. It was a very simple life and this helps us keep our feet on the ground and appreciate everything we have. One generation back, two generations back, people were living in completely different conditions. A lot of people remember that here.”

“I thought, economics, that will always be useful.”

“We were like any other kid. You go to school every morning, come home in the evening, do your homework. We were conscious that our situation wasn’t exactly the same as everyone else’s, but I don’t think it affected us.”