Monte Carlo/Monaco City Info

Monte-Carlo is the area of Monaco where the real money is flung about, and its famous casino is worth to be seen. Once in your life you have to go for a trip in Monaco. This mythic place, between the Alpes and the Mediterranean Sea will offer you dreams and reality. Alone, both or with your family, for romantic holidays, simple tourism or a business trip, the Principality of Monaco will offer you a universe of many facets. Monaco Monte-Carlo provides you many discoveries, a highly cultured place with its many museums, nice welcome with its nicest hotels in the world, sumptuous gastronomy with his well known restaurants.

Day-trippers and gambling dilettantes usually don't enter the casino proper, but head for the small room (free) of one-armed bandits and poker machines by the main entrance. Without further commitment you can also wander around the impressive entry hall, use the luxurious toilets and check out the small theatre (containing temporary exhibitions). The first gambling hall of the inner sanctum is the Salons Européens (open from noon; €10), where further slot machines surround the American roulette, craps and blackjack tables, the managers are Vegas-trained, the lights low and the air oppressively smoky. Above this slice of Nevada, however, the decor is fin-de-siècle Rococo extravagance, while the ceilings in the adjoining Pink Salon Bar are adorned with female nudes smoking cigarettes. The heart of the place is the Salons Privés (from 3pm ), through the Salles Touzet. To get in, you have to look like a gambler, not a tourist (no cameras), and dispense with €20 at the door. Much larger and more richly decorated than the European Rooms, its early-afternoon or out-of-season atmosphere is that of a cathedral. No clinking coins, just sliding chips and softly spoken croupiers. Elderly gamblers pace silently, fingering hefty banknotes (the maximum unnegotiated stake here is €76,000), closed-circuit TV cameras above the chandeliers watch the gamblers watching the tables, and no one drinks. On midsummer evenings the place is packed out and the vice loses its sacred and exclusive touch.