The Venetian authourities stepped in, initially to bring order to the lottery craze, and then to conduct their own drawings. They raffled off everything from cash and real estate to official jobs and commissions, while stifling the competition. Bringing lotteries under government control was done for the good of the people, of course. A percentage of the income derived from them went to feeding the poor and ransoming hostages held in foreign lands.
Despite such intervention, Venice remained enamoured of gambling. When attempts were made to ban them, the dice and card games that occurred spontaneously on street corners simply fled indoors to private chambers known as “ridotto.” Particularly among the aristocracy, the ridotto flourished. The favourite pastime in the 16th and 17th century was called “Basset,” a card game played against a banker that allowed winnings to ride and multiply—a wager known as paroli, or “parlay.”
In 1638, realizing that a gambling prohibition was futile, the Great Council of Venice had an epiphany. During the city’s spring Carnival, they converted a four-story building in the San Moisé Palace to use for legal gaming. They named it “The Ridotto.” Thus was Europe’s first, state-sanctioned casino born.
One of the regulations for gambling at the Ridotto was that all players except nobility had to wear Carnival masks. Refreshments were sold for a profit and stakes were high enough that the government reaped handsome revenues. Hours were extended so that players could wager till midnight under huge candlelit chandeliers. By 1768, the Ridotto was expanded and a second legal gambling house was opened at the San Cassian Theatre.
The games enjoyed at the Ridotto back then were not the casino games played now. Basset, for example, very quickly gave way to Faro, while the Italian card game called panfil disappeared completely. Another popular Ridotto game known as biribisso used a leather sack from which numbers were blindly drawn; it could only be thought of as a most distant cousin to roulette.
The most popular casino table games today—blackjack, baccarat and roulette—all owe their origins to France, where a wave of gambling fervor swept across the country between 1650 and 1800. From King Henry III to King Louis XIV, games of chance were an integral part of court life. The French infatuation with gambling survived even the country’s Revolution.
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