What is the oldest casino in the world?
The oldest casino in the world, by its own claim, is the Casino di Venezia, which dates itself to 1638, the year Venice opened the Ridotto, the first state-sanctioned public gambling house. The claim is a lineage, not an unbroken run: the Ridotto was closed by the same Venetian government in 1774, and the palace the casino operates in today, Ca’ Vendramin Calergi on the Grand Canal, has hosted it only since 1959, in a building the city bought in 1946. So the honest version is that Venice hosts the oldest casino INSTITUTION in the world, with a roughly 180-year interruption in the middle that the marketing does not mention. No currently operating casino has a longer documented lineage, which is why the claim stands even with the gap stated.
The claim is true as a lineage and false as an unbroken run. Both halves are worth knowing.
The evidence
| Event | Year | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Ridotto opens | 1638 | Venice opens the first state-sanctioned public gambling house; the date the modern casino claims as its founding. |
| Ridotto closes | 1774 | Closed by the Venetian government to curb gambling among the nobility. |
| City buys Ca’ Vendramin Calergi | 1946 | The palace where Richard Wagner died in 1883 becomes city property. |
| Casino opens at Ca’ Vendramin Calergi | 1959 | The palace becomes the winter seat of the Casino di Venezia, its home today. |
How we know
The 1638 date and the "oldest gaming establishment in the world" wording are the operator’s own claim, published on casinovenezia.it. The Ridotto’s opening and closing dates are the standard reference record. The 1946 purchase and 1959 opening at Ca’ Vendramin Calergi are documented in the palace’s own history. What we could not source is a continuous operating record between 1774 and the modern casino, and no source we read claims one; treat any "continuously operating since 1638" phrasing you see elsewhere as embellishment. For the story of the Ridotto itself, see our first-casino page.