Casino du Liban
Encyclopedia
Casino
In modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships or other tourist attractions...
located in Maameltein, Jounieh
Jounieh
Jounieh is a Mediterranean coastal city about 16 kilometers north of Beirut, Lebanon. Jounieh is known for its seaside resorts, pubs, restaurants and nightclubs, as well as its old stone souk, ferry, and cablecar , which takes passengers up the mountain to the shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in...
in Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
and is 22 km north of Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
.
With an area of about 35,000 square meters, the casino has around 400 slot machine
Slot machine
A slot machine , informally fruit machine , the slots , poker machine or "pokies" or simply slot is a casino gambling machine with three or more reels which spin when a button is pushed...
s and 60 gaming tables. It has a showroom, night club, theater, banquet facility and five restaurants. The casino was first opened in 1959. It closed in 1989 and reopened in 1996 after a $50 million reconstruction and refurbishment project.
Casino du Liban was the only casino in the Arab world in the 1970s.
In his memoir of the international hotel business, Shadow of the Sun: Travels And Adventures in the World of Hotels, Peter J. Venison wrote that the Casino du Liban "was elegant, yet the cabaret was spectacular and rivaled anything that Las Vegas could offer". He also described it as a backdrop of a James Bond novel where clientele from the richest elite of European and Arabian societies ventured into the casino in formal black-tie attire.
In Literature
- Captain from Corfu by Muriel Maddox
- "A tour of the city was planned and that evening dinner at the Casino du Liban."
- The Man in the Middle by Hugh Atkinson
- "The Casino du Liban was set on a cliff, outside Beirut on the coast road."