text: Decline of Grimaldi power By the time of Charles III's death in 1889, Monaco and Monte Carlo were synonymous as one and the same place, and had acquired, through gambling, a reputation as a louche and decadent playground of the rich. It attracted everyone from Russian grand dukes and railway magnates, often with their mistresses, to adventurers, causing the small country to be derided by many including Queen Victoria. In fact so decadent was Monaco considered that from 1882, when she first began visiting the French Riviera, Queen Victoria refused to make a courtesy social call at the palace. The contemporary writer Sabine Baring-Gould described the habituées of Monaco as "the moral cesspool of Europe."
  The successive rulers of Monaco tended to live elsewhere and visit their palace only occasionally. Charles III was succeeded in 1889 by Albert I. Albert married Lady Mary Victoria Douglas-Hamilton, a daughter of Scotland's 11th duke of Hamilton, and his German wife, a princess of Baden. The couple had one son, Louis, before their marriage was annulled in 1880. Albert was a keen scientist and founded the Oceanographic Institute in 1906; as a pacifist he then founded the International Institute of Peace in Monaco. Albert's second wife, Alice Heine, an American banking heiress who was the widow of a French duke, did much to turn Monte Carlo into a cultural centre, establishing both ballet and the opera in the city. Having brought a large dowry into the family she contemplated turning the casino into a convalescent home for the poor who would benefit from recuperation in warm climes. The couple, however, separated before Alice was able to put her plan into action.