Wiesbaden

Wiesbaden shares Baden-Baden's thermal-town heritage but carries a sharper literary association: Dostoevsky's ruinous 1865 losses at the Kurhaus tables here are widely credited as the direct spark for The Gambler, written the following year to pay off the resulting debts. The town's grand neoclassical Kurhaus, completed in 1907, still hosts concerts and civic events alongside the gaming rooms, giving the whole complex a more municipal, institutional feel than a purely commercial casino.