Credit: Tour Odeon

Inside the World's Most Expensive Apartment: A $335 Million Penthouse in Monaco's Tour Odeon

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In luxury real estate, there is, and has been for the last few years, no ceiling. Given that, there's still a marked difference in pricing between properties that we may now rank as ordinarily, acceptably, and possibly even charmingly nuts, and those that seem to demand a new classification as certifiably, clinically insane. The latter category seems to have recently been met in Monaco, where, in the 49-story concrete-and-glass tower called La Tour Odeon, five years in the building and now the principality's highest building, the five-floor penthouse has been prospectively put on the market for a tidy $335 million, or thereabouts. Developed by the Groupe Marzocco, designed by the Monegasque architect Alexandre Giraldi, the Tour Odeon topped out last year. Varying flats in the building, including the five-story penthouse, have been on the market for some months. Serious offers may have been entertained for the penthouse, but it is not known to be under contract. The point is, rather, that the fact of the offering, and the confidence of the developers as shown in the sheer mass of the mixed-use project in such a tight, hot, postage-stamp of a realty market as Monaco, is an indicator of the health of Europe's luxury market.

Bluntly, politically put, despite what we might think of as all social and economic indicators against European investment, namely, the migrant crisis, the slow death of the Euro, mass terror attacks just down the road in Nice over the summer, not to mention the Paris terror attacks or the Continent's many other systemic travails, luxury in its most immobile form can still drag the cash out of the deep pockets. It's heartening, in a way. There is still value to be sought if you have the $300-plus million lying around for a penthouse flat.

And, what a flat: the 31,500-square foot, five-floor palace occupies the 45th through the 49th floors of the Tour Odeon. The apartment includes a rooftop deck and pool, with its own water slide that descends one story from the dance floor directly into the infinity pool, if that gives us a sense of the dimensions. The flat has a spectacular view of the ocean and the 'ville,' as the French understatedly put it. You do get something for your lucre, in other words, nearly thirty-two thousand square feet in a town where just under 90 square feet goes for roughly $1 million.

The engine driving real estate in Monaco is a bit different, however, from that in the rest of the urban-luxury real estate world. Property within the two-thousand-yard wide principality has, nominally and sometimes actually, a greater monetary value because it is a tax haven, of course. One's income and property taxes on a similar apartment in Manhattan or Paris would be quite different – not that that is exactly a hindrance to the purchasers of luxury properties in Manhattan or in St. Germain. Prince Albert & Co. drive a semi-tough deal for admission behind the velvet rope: you must become a full-time 'resident' of Monaco, as many international athletes do – such as tennis ace Novak Djokovic and his family, or until recently, F1 driver Jenson Button, among others. It's a neat tax haven if you do your deals there – by the way, no Americans, unless you're ready to give up your citizenship. Asians, led by Chinese and Indian buyers, and Eastern Europeans, led by the south of France's omnipresent Russians, are the driving force in Monegasque apartments above $10 million, according to Knight Frank, the realtor listing one of the smaller apartments in La Tour Odeon.

So, if you're American and you have the one-third of a billion dollars—give or take—idling away in the sock drawer, and you're ready to surrender your passport in order to move to Monaco, this glorious flat is yours. If you'd rather not renounce your citizenship and just figure you'll use the place for a ringside pied-a-terre during the Monaco Grand Prix, the Cannes Film Festival and a few tennis tourneys, and maybe to snag a table at the Red Cross Ball to catch a glimpse of Princess Charlene grimacing under the customary load of Grimaldi family diamonds, Prince Albert and tout Monaco would surely welcome your purchase that way, too.
