I'm sorry, I was busy to follow last days posts by Carlos about Italian casinos, so I'll try to recap today something.

Viareggio (my hometown, BTW)

Viareggio was a small city where wealthy people from Lucca went to have some fun, we have trace of illegal gambling around 1750. Municipality of Lucca tried settled down this, but there was a beach and many people was gambling all around. In 1834 the "Rules for Casino in the town of Viareggio" had an approval by local government. We must specify, the word CASINO was not the same we use actually. In italian there's 2 different words Casino and Casinò. The place were gambling is allowed is the casinò. The Casino was a place for people not resident to have relax, it was the same as "Cercle privé" in France, in the casino people meet and enjoy drinks, talks, read newspapers, hear music, have parties with dances (remember is 1800). Gambling was at this time forbidden, but commonly practiced in many other places. The "Regio Casino" was in the old Via Regia, one of the first roads in Viareggio. The building was promised to church, but local rulers had to find another place to raise a church and keep this for the Casino. In 1908 municipality of Viareggio ask to Italian Parliament the permit to open a legal Gambling house (Casinò). The place was the new Kursaal, another word similar to casino, this means literally "hall of health". Kursaal were big buildings in thermal and cure locations where people meet after treatments, doing the same as the Casino (not the Casinò). The Kursaal was built very similar to Montecarlo Casino, it was a very beautiful building almost destroyed by US bombing during the WWII. In 1922, in a local newspaper we can read in Viareggio there was at least 15 illegal gambling houses, where gambling, prost.itution and drugs were easy to find. In 1924 a national law give the permit to open legal casinò in Italy, only in touristic stations working for more than 10 years and not close to towns with more than 200.000 inhabitants. The Kursaal was the first legal Casino in the town. In 1937 the Mussolini government disposed the end of gambling in all the country. At this time we have records about the old Casino in Via Regia, police sent from Lucca settled down gambling, did some arrest, and closed all the gambling houses, legal or not.
After WWII in another place opened only for few months the Casinò Municipale, in the halls of a building on the shore, in front of one of the most beautiful hotels in Viareggio, Principe di Piemonte.