Baden-Baden

Baden-Baden built its whole identity around the pairing of thermal baths and its casino, and the town's Kurhaus — the building housing both — is arguably the single most ornately decorated casino interior in this atlas, modelled directly on Versailles and Fontainebleau by the Bénazet family in the nineteenth century. The town became the summer counterpart to the Riviera's winter season, drawing Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and much of European high society through its rooms.

Unlike the Riviera resorts, Baden-Baden keeps a genuinely quiet, provincial Black Forest atmosphere outside the casino itself — spa treatments, forest walks, and a well-preserved nineteenth-century townscape rather than nightlife. The casino's daytime architectural tours, held before the tables open, are one of the more accessible ways in this entire atlas to see a historic gaming interior without needing to gamble or dress formally.