Princess Grace and Prince Rainier’s 70th wedding anniversary is currently being celebrated with an exhibition at Monaco’s Princely Palace. Prince Albert II, Princess Caroline, and Princess Alexandra inaugurated the exhibition on 18 June 2026.
Photographs, moving images, audio recordings, jewellery, dresses, gifts, and previously unseen archives, are all on display until 25 September 2026.
The exhibition takes visitors on a journey to discover the key guests, locations, highlights, and behind-the-scenes moments of the week-long celebration. The exhibition begins with the spectacular arrival of Grace Kelly on the morning of 12 April and ends with the royal couple’s departure on their honeymoon on the evening of the 19th.
Princess Grace and Prince Rainier III had the world’s first televised royal wedding. Dubbed the “Wedding of the Century” by French Newspaper Le Figaro, thousands of reporters, guests and fans descended onto the Principality’s small territory to catch a glimpse of the event. It was the world’s first televised royal wedding, and was watched by over 30 million viewers on live television, broadcast by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios.
The exhibition shows how the wedding of Prince Rainier III and Grace Kelly “shaped Monaco’s contemporary history,” says the Prince’s Palace. Carefully curated by Thomas Fouilleron and Vincent Vatrican, the exhibition features the dress worn by Princess Grace Kelly for the civil wedding ceremony, as well as the gown worn for the gala reception and the diamond and ruby tiara gifted to her by the Société des Bains de Mer.
Princess Grace’s Wedding Dress
The true highlight of the exhibition is the iconic dress that Princess Grace wore for the religious wedding ceremony. Cited as “one of the most elegant and best-remembered bridal gowns of all time,” the dress was gifted to Grace Kelly by MGM. It was designed by Helen Rose and created by the studio’s wardrobe artists. The dress is made of silk adorned with thousands of tiny pearls and a 125-year-old rose point lace fabric which was procured from a museum in Belgium.
After the wedding, Princess Grace gifted the gown to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the wedding in 2006, the museum displayed it in an exhibition, which was reported to have been its “most popular exhibit”. Now, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the wedding, the gown is back in Monaco.
