Monaco and Granville share similarities and part of their history. Both cities are perched on a rock overlooking the sea. Jacques IV of Matignon, the Governor of Granville and the Chausey Islands, was also Prince of Monaco from 1731 to 1733. He came from a renowned Norman aristocratic family that ruled Granville, Saint-Lô, and Cherbourg since 1578. The nickname Monaco of the North sometimes attributed to Granville was born under a writer's pen in 1885 and taken up by the local tourist office in the 1920s and 1950s.