Jacques Bellin (1703-72) was a prolific cartographer attached to the French Marine Office. In 1764, he published Le Petit Atlas Maritime (Small maritime atlas), a work in five volumes containing 581 maps. This map is from volume four of the atlas. Oriented with north at the lower right, it shows the city and port of Monaco. The Principality of Monaco is one of the world’s smallest countries. The Italian city-state of Genoa gained control of the region around Monaco in the 1100s and built the first fort there in 1215. In 1308, Genoa granted the right to rule the city to a prominent Genoese family, the Grimaldi, which, with the exception of a brief period during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic eras, has done so ever since.