We know a casino as a building or – in our modern times – as a website, where you can find all kinds of gambling. Over the many centuries of gambling’s existence, the casino has taken many forms and evolved. The current growth of the casino is mainly due to the online casino and mobile casinos. But what about the oldest casinos in the world. Do they still exist? We take you on a historical journey.
In the 21st century no one is surprised anymore by a casino more or less. People come there to play roulette, win the jackpot on a slot, watch other gamblers, and taste the atmosphere. Many casinos, especially those abroad, have a special atmosphere.
Casinos are now a normal phenomenon. But that hasn’t been the case for a long time.
Casa Casino
That was fun for a while. But the Italian nobles who visited a casa every day out of boredom had seen the entertainment and even the drink at some point. To create a bit of tension, they started betting among themselves on sports matches.
Which samurai fighter was going to beat the others? Which wrestler was better, the fat one or the very fat one? This is how the casa turned from a theatre into a gambling hall. A chic gambling hall that is.
Betting that money on the ‘sports competitions’ shown happened secretly because the Italian authorities did not want any noise in the entertainment houses.
The word “casino” comes from Italian. It is derived from the word ‘casa,’ which means ‘house’ or ‘little villa’. But back in the day, ‘casa’ in Italy also meant something like ‘entertainment house.’
In an Italian casa, people were entertained with music, champagne, ballet, opera performances and sports competitions from roughly the fifteenth century, i.e. after the Dark Ages. Not football, but for example, wrestling, fencing and other stage-genic martial arts.
The Very First Casino
The first Italian government – Italy at the time was not yet a single country but consisted of several city-states – that allowed gambling for money in a casa was the government of Venice.
The city in the water was in dire need of money, and by regulating gaming, it was able to tax the profits of the bookmakers operating in the casa.
The first official casino, the Casinò di Venezia, was founded in Venice in 1638. It still exists and is housed in an old palace on the Grand Canal, where you can just pop in to try your luck. Please note the dress code: a jacket is required if you want to go to the table games room.
In contemporary Italian, some brothels also call themselves “casinos”. In the land of the boot, the word casino means as much as ‘a closed house’.
Gambling in Belgium
The second European country to officially allow casinos was Belgium in the eighteenth century.
In 1763 a casino was built in the fashionable spa town of Spa. The spa was then the tourist center of the Ardennes for the nobility and wealthy bourgeoisie. And since they could spare a few cents, the idea of a casino was not so crazy after all.
Spa casino was not given a long life. In 1789, the Liège Revolution broke out, and gambling was banned shortly after.
Up to and including 1917, the building functioned alternately as a hotel, theatre, spa and occasionally, when there was another change of power, as a casino. In 1917 most of the casinos burned down.
It was not until 1980 that the casino was restored to its former glory. Since 2003, the centuries-old casino has been run by the Belgian gaming company Circus Groupe. If you are in the area, stop the car and step inside.
Back to the casinos of Italy for a moment. There too, just like in ‘Belgium,’ playing for money was soon restricted again. In 1770, the city-state of Venice banned the casino again. The reason? If the city council of Venice previously wanted to get a piece of the gaming revenue in the form of taxes, it soon became apparent that many noblemen could no longer pay taxes at all because they had lost their capital in, how do you guess, the casino!
Gambling in The States
From Europe, we go to America. Playing for money was also popular there. In a more or less regulated form, those betting games first took place in saloons. A saloon was a kind of pub-cum-inn and also – Mister Casino can’t help it – a brothel for mainly itinerant traders.
The first saloon opened in Wyoming in 1822 as a trading place for fur hunters. Furs contained money, so those hunters had money to pay for a warm place to sleep. From 1850 the saloon became common in America. Brewers, in particular, were happy with this because they could sell their spirits onand playingthose premises.
Soon American saloons were not only drinking, sleeping, eating and trading, but also played for money. Often card games, but they also played dice, darts and ball-ball. Later, the first mechanical slot machines appeared in the saloons: the one-armed bandit.
The casino party in the saloons didn’t last long. One by one, the American states decided to ban gambling. That was unbelievably true, partly due to a strong lobby of housewives’ clubs.
One state in America, Nevada, decided to allow gambling again in 1931.
New Jersey followed suit in 1978. In the (always) windy resort of Atlantic City, the first casino with the slightly exaggerated name Resorts International opened on May 26, 1978. The ‘Resort’ didn’t amount to much. A year later, Bally’s hotel-casino opened, which (then) was already a lot nicer and more complete.
The Chinese Way
Let’s take a look at a casino on yet another side of the world: China. Contrary to what you might think, the Chinese are quite late with their casinos. Europe (Portugal) had to be involved in playing those getting the Chinese into legal gambling.
China’s casino history begins on the Macau Peninsula, a colony of Portugal since the 16th century.
A colony that Portugal was not very happy with because Macau cost a lot of money. In 1850, the Portuguese government legalized the Chinese gambling houses where the popular game Fan Tan was played to earn some money back.
In 1937, Macau went a step further and allowed real, full-featured casinos. Initially, the Chinese were not very enthusiastic about it – how is it possible. It wasn’t until 1962 when a few businessmen joined forces and built a few big casinos, that the Chinese started playing roulette en masse and, above all: baccarat.
In 2014 there are 33 casinos in Macau. The casinos account for 50 percent of the local economy; since 2007, Macau has been the largest gambling city in the world, measured by turnover.
In 2013, more betting on these few square miles than in the entire United States combined.
Haram
That’s how the casino conquered the world. Or well, almost the whole world because gambling is strictly prohibited in strict Muslim countries – and so are casinos. Islam regards gambling as ‘haram’: sinful and forbidden:
Man’s lifespan is much shorter in proportion to the world’s lifespan. Therefore, every moment of our time, which is more valuable than gold, should be devoted to activities that will illuminate eternal life—the afterlife.” Gambling, apparently, is not one of them.
Islamic countries deal with that divine prohibition quite differently. You won’t find any casino in Dubai, but there is a lot of bets on horse races.
Conclusion
While online casinos will never go away, neither will land-based casinos. No matter how nice or how good an online casino is, it can never replace a real casino.