The Kurhaus is the long colonnaded building facing the Kurgarten, and for almost two centuries it has been the social engine of Baden-Baden. A Kurhaus, in German spa towns, is the building where guests gathered when they were not bathing: concerts, dinners, balls, cards. In Baden-Baden that program came to include roulette, and the roulette is what made the town famous well beyond Germany.
Weinbrenner’s assembly rooms
The building went up between 1821 and 1824 to plans by Friedrich Weinbrenner, the Baden state architect and one of the leading German neoclassicists. It was originally called the Konversationshaus, the conversation house, which is a fair description of its purpose: a dignified place for spa guests to meet, be entertained, and be seen.
The facade Weinbrenner gave it, a deep portico on a row of Corinthian columns, still sets the tone for the whole town center and remains one of the defining attractions in Baden-Baden.
Almost immediately, a second attraction arrived. Gambling was running in the building from 1824, and it changed the economics of the place. Where a spa town normally depended on people who were unwell, a casino brought people who were perfectly healthy and had money to lose.
The Bénazet years
The transformation into a European destination happened under one family. Jacques Bénazet took over the lease on the gaming concession in 1838, and his son Édouard Bénazet expanded on it with considerable ambition. The Bénazets had the interiors redone in the manner of French royal palaces, all gilt, mirrors and painted ceilings, and they programmed the town: concerts, balls, horse racing at Iffezheim, an entire season built to keep aristocratic guests occupied for months.
It worked. Through the middle of the 19th century Baden-Baden was known as the summer capital of Europe. Princes, diplomats, composers and writers came for the season, and the Kurhaus was where they all ended up in the evening. Among them were most of the famous visitors still associated with the town, including Dostoevsky, who lost badly at these tables and turned the experience into his novel The Gambler.
The historic gaming rooms are still there, and they can be seen on a daytime guided tour, before play begins, without any obligation to gamble. Marlene Dietrich reportedly called this the most beautiful casino in the world, and the room-by-room comparison to Versailles is not entirely a stretch.
Closure and return
In 1872 the newly unified German Empire banned casino gambling nationwide, and the tables in Baden-Baden went dark. The town did not collapse, but the character of the season changed; the Kurhaus carried on as a concert hall and event venue without its main draw. The ban held for six decades. The casino reopened in 1933 and picked the tradition back up.
The Kurhaus now
Today the building holds three things under one roof: the casino, a set of grand ballrooms and function halls, and a program of concerts and events. There is a dress code in the gaming rooms in the evening, jacket and collared shirt for men, which visitors regularly get caught out by. The daytime tour has no dress code.
Practically, the Kurhaus is the anchor of the town center. The Trinkhalle is next door, the Lichtentaler Allee begins across the river, and most hotels in Baden-Baden are within a short walk. It is the obvious place to start a first evening.