Bénazet and the making of Baden-Baden

Baden-Baden's Kurhaus, built between 1821 and 1824 to Friedrich Weinbrenner's plans, was largely paid for with casino taxes. That is the first fact worth keeping: here the gaming tables did not grow beside the spa town, they financed it. In 1838 Jacques Bénazet (1778–1848) took over the lease. The timing was good. France banned its casinos in 1837, and the railway of 1844 added to the traffic; the Kurhaus's own history counts 32,943 visitors in 1847. After Jacques's death in 1848 his son Edouard took over and led the business until his own death in 1867.

The lease and the rooms

A new ten-year lease was agreed in 1853. The gaming halls, in a style the Kurhaus describes as Louis XIII to Louis XVI and credited to Séchan and Bérain, were inaugurated on 11 August 1855. Popular accounts say the Roter Saal copies Fontainebleau; German Wikipedia mentions Fontainebleau and Versailles, while the Kurhaus gives only the period style, so we leave the model open. The same applies to the often-repeated line that the decorators were Parisian: the sources we read do not say so.

Racecourse, park and theatre

The first horse races at Iffezheim took place on 5 September 1858, on a course built and paid for from casino revenue. The Lichtentaler Allee became an English-style landscape park between 1850 and 1870 "on behalf of" the lessees, according to the town wiki; but that source names Jacques, who died in 1848, and the city's walking guide credits the gardener Zeyher after 1839, so the attribution is unclear. The theatre, designed by Couteau and built between 1860 and 1862, was a gift of Bénazet. At its opening on 9 August 1862 Hector Berlioz conducted the premiere of his opera Béatrice et Bénédict.

Writers at the tables

Ivan Turgenev lived in the town for seven years in total, near the singer Pauline Viardot, and his novel Smoke, published in 1867, is set there. In 1867 he quarrelled with Dostoevsky, who gambled in Baden-Baden in 1863 and 1867. (For the Russian novelist's other casino towns see Dostoevsky in Wiesbaden.) The phrase "summer capital of Europe" is academic usage today, notably the title of Eva Zimmermann's open-access book Baden-Baden, Sommerhauptstadt Europas, 1840–1870 (heiUP, 2024). We could not read the book and cannot say who first used the phrase.

A quotation to treat with care

Many guides quote Marlene Dietrich calling the Kurhaus the most beautiful casino in the world. Lonely Planet and English Wikipedia give the line without a date or context; German Wikipedia cites a Süddeutsche Zeitung article; a 2019 magazine piece repeats it without a source. We found no interview, letter or film that carries it, and the casino's own history page says only that she loved the casino. The honest form is that the line is often attributed to Dietrich.

The end of the first era

The casino closed on 31 October 1872, ahead of the imperial ban that took effect on 1 January 1873. The story of how play came back, with a French group in 1933 and again after the war, is in why casinos sit in spa towns.

What to see today

The Casino Baden-Baden is in the Kurhaus at Kaiserallee 1. Morning tours run at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 and 13:00 for €10 with no ID check (the 13:00 tour is in English). Close by are the theatre, the 2.3 km Lichtentaler Allee and, outside town, the Iffezheim course. Baden-Baden has belonged to the UNESCO Great Spa Towns of Europe since 2021. The Baden-Baden dossier covers dress, hours and hotels.