Step inside the world-famous Casino de Monte-Carlo
Important note: gambling can lead to bankruptcy. You should not gamble using borrowed money, nor spend all your money. Treat casino gambling only as entertainment, not as a way to get rich. In this article, I do not encourage you to gamble at Monte Carlo Casino. I describe this place as a tourist attraction that is worth visiting.
Monte Carlo Casino is a magnificent, richly decorated building in the Principality of , and also the main attraction of the district. It is something you must see while you are in Monaco. If you like to gamble, you can also play of course.
Monte Carlo Casino is one of the most exclusive gambling facilities in the world. It is also one of Monaco’s most interesting attractions. You can still visit the casino even if you do not plan to gamble.
THE BEST Monte-Carlo Casinos Youll Want to Visit (Updated 2024)
Today, Tachoires is overseeing the cleaning of a French roulette table. Every day, they are checked, vacuumed with handheld Dyson cleaners and polished from their top rails to their wheel turrets. They are clad in a wool softer than baize, woven by the same Belgian brand that supplies the King’s Guard, and dyed ‘Monte-Carlo Green’, a shade exclusive to the casino. Once unfurled in the workshop, this fabric is stapled to the custom-built tables and methodically spot-dyed with nitric acid to create the distinctive yellow markings of a particular game.
That may be so, but the Casino de Monte-Carlo still maintains more French roulette tables than any other establishment worldwide. Bonafede also calls it a “dying game”, revealing that, while there are a handful of tables in Germany and Belgium (curiously, none in France, itself), this is the only place you’ll find more than one. It’s a hard game to master, and, in the nine years it takes a Casino de Monte-Carlo croupier to learn their craft, the final six months are dedicated solely to its many quirks and conventions.
There are also gaming plaques and tokens, framed and hung on ornate silk wallpaper. When the Casino de Monte-Carlo opened, Bonafede says, it used chips of pure gold. These were replaced with fishbone chips and, in turn, plastic, which bear an exclusive design that changes every 20 years. The playing cards, however, are standard. A dedicated team deals with these decks, and, in games such as Baccarat, where the cards are bent, the entire pack is thrown away after every round.
The annual Monaco Grand Prix is, unsurprisingly, eagerly awaited by every ‘voiturier’. During the race weekend, the Place du Casino square is closed, so the valets collect cars from the nearby Hôtel Hermitage. Casino guests are then shown into the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, ushered into a hidden lift and guided under the square through a secret subterranean tunnel. When Winston Churchill would visit the hotel, he’d use the same passageway, emerging beside the gaming tables (where Aristotle Onassis would allegedly bankroll him chips).
The Monte-Carlo Casino: a legendary shrine to gaming
Martinis are just one of the epicurean pleasures to be found in the Casino de Monte-Carlo. Cavaliere works two bars and, in the ‘Salon Rose’ restaurant — where a yolky beef tartare upholds tradition, and both bream and bass are fished from the sea outside — the oil-painted ceiling is stained brown with cigar smoke. From the cornicing down, it’s a pristine dining room. But, the mural overhead was left untouched during restorations, hidden behind this tinge of tobacco, and serving as a salient, sentimental reminder of the casino’s more bacchanalian days.
How to get from Gare de Nice-Ville to Monte-Carlo Casino and ..
Such boats still ferry visitors along the Riviera today. You can spot them, bobbing in sparkling waters, through the casino’s expansive windows (another rarity; most casinos lack windows of any sort). But, with views like these, how could the Casino de Monte-Carlo close itself off from the world? Instead, the establishment has embraced its salt-sprayed scenery, building vast open-air terraces that teem with waterproofed gaming tables.
Exploring the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco
That explains the clock. Step off Tarditi’s balcony, back inside the casino and you’ll find it hanging from the ceiling of a palatial ‘salles de jeux’. Golden and glorious, it is the most prominent casino clock in the world (casinos, in fact, rarely contain clocks at all). But, this was a necessary flourish, installed so gamblers past could keep time and, in the absence of roads or railways, catch the last daily boat out of Monaco.
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But, Charles had help, adds the casino director. French businessman François Blanc, who had established an eminent casino in Frankfurt, the ‘Spielbank Bad Homburg’, was coaxed to Monaco and tasked with conjuring up similar noise on these shores. He would later earn the nickname ‘The Magician of Monte-Carlo’, after successfully tempting travellers here from nearby Nice.
What do I need to know before visiting Monte-Carlo Casino?
The Casino de Monte-Carlo has inspired a number of books and films, including the first novel, Casino Royale (1953), and the Bond movies Never Say Never Again (1983) and GoldenEye (1995) were filmed at the casino. A music-hall song, “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,” was inspired by the gamblers Joseph Jagger and Charles Wells, who swept the board there in the early days by calculating the bias on a wheel. Anyone willing to pay the entrance fees can play in the Salon Blanc or Salons Européans, but the minimum bids in the most gaming rooms will deter all but the most wealthy.