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Places & history · 7 min read

Casino buildings worth seeing

Some gaming floors sit inside Renaissance palaces, Expo pavilions and converted steel mills. Fifteen buildings that are worth the visit regardless of the tables.

A gaming floor is not usually an architectural destination. A dozen or so are, either because the casino was placed inside a building constructed for something else entirely, or because the building was conceived as a piece of civic spectacle. This list is organised by what makes each one worth the detour.

Palaces and civic buildings put to a new use

  • Ca' Vendramin Calergi, Venice. A Renaissance palace on the Grand Canal, where Wagner died in 1883. Gaming runs through the piano nobile, and the approach by water is part of the experience.
  • Palais Esterházy, Vienna. A baroque townhouse on Kärntner Straße, with the tables arranged through the original rooms rather than on an open floor.
  • Dragonara Palace, St Julian's. An 1870s seaside summer residence on its own promontory in Malta, converted in 1964 and still recognisably a villa.
  • Kurhaus, Baden-Baden. Gaming salons of the 1820s decorated in the style of French royal palaces and preserved intact. Guided tours run before play begins in the afternoon.
  • Kurhaus, Wiesbaden. A monumental 1907 spa building facing a colonnaded square, with the classic rooms in the historic halls.

Buildings designed as spectacle

  • Casino de Monte-Carlo. Charles Garnier's Beaux-Arts composition of 1863, with an opera house attached to the same structure. The building that defined what a casino looks like.
  • Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Three hotel towers carrying a 340-metre sky deck with an infinity pool. The most reproduced casino image in the world, and the clearest statement of the integrated resort model.
  • Grand Lisboa, Macau. A lotus-shaped tower in a gold lattice shell, and the dominant object on the Macau skyline.
  • Luxor, Las Vegas. A thirty-storey glass pyramid with lifts that travel at an angle up the sloping walls, and a xenon beam from the apex.
  • Studio City, Macau. A figure-of-eight Ferris wheel suspended between two towers, which is as strange in person as it sounds.

Adaptive reuse of industrial and exhibition sites

  • Casino de Montréal. The French and Quebec pavilions of Expo 67 on Île Notre-Dame, converted in 1993. The cantilevered form means gaming runs over five levels.
  • Wind Creek Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Built on the former Bethlehem Steel works, with the preserved blast furnaces lit directly behind the building.
  • MotorCity Casino, Detroit. A converted 1920s bakery, the only one of Detroit's three casinos in a reused historic structure.
  • Casino Lisboa. On the Expo 98 site at Parque das Nações, organised around a central auditorium.
  • The Hippodrome, London. A 1900 variety theatre on Leicester Square that has been a circus, a music hall and a nightclub; the auditorium still operates above the gaming floors.

Settings that outrank the architecture

Three properties are worth visiting for where they stand rather than for what was built. Niagara Fallsview looks directly onto the Horseshoe Falls from the gaming floor and its theatre. SkyCity Auckland sits at the base of the 328-metre Sky Tower, built as part of the same development. Sun City, in the North West province of South Africa, adjoins the Pilanesberg game reserve, which makes the drive in unlike the approach to any other casino.

A practical note on photography

The buildings are photogenic; the gaming floors are frequently not photographable. Macau prohibits photography on casino floors outright. Many other jurisdictions permit it in public areas and prohibit it at the tables, and staff will intervene. Lobbies, atriums, exteriors and retail arcades are almost always fine, and in the European historic venues the morning tour is the one time the salons can be seen and photographed without play in progress.

Questions

Can I visit a casino just to see the building?

In most European venues yes, on payment of the admission charge where one applies, and Baden-Baden runs morning guided tours specifically for visitors who do not intend to play. Identification is still required at the door.

Which is the single most impressive casino interior?

On the historic side, the Baden-Baden salons and the Monte-Carlo private rooms are the two that architectural writers return to. On the contemporary side, Marina Bay Sands is the building that changed what the type looks like.

Are there casinos in buildings of real architectural significance?

Several. The Venice palace, the Vienna Palais Esterházy, the two German Kurhäuser and the Montreal Expo pavilions are all listed or protected structures whose significance predates their current use.

Why do American casinos have so little exterior architecture?

Because the mid-century American model treated the building as a container and put the spectacle inside, on the Strip frontage or on the sign. Wynn Las Vegas deliberately reversed that by screening the resort behind a landscaped hill.

Last reviewed 1 January 1970. This page explains how something works; it is not legal advice and not a recommendation to gamble.