Casino du Liban

Casino du Liban is a casino located in Maameltein, in Lebanon and is 22 km north of Beirut.

Casino du Liban
Casino du Liban at night
Location Maameltein, Jounieh
Notable restaurantsLa Martingale
Websitecdl.com.lb

With an area of about 35,000 square meters, the casino has around 400 slot machines and 60 gaming tables. It has a showroom, night club, theater, banquet facility and five restaurants. The casino was first opened in 1959. It closed in 1989 during the Lebanese Civil War and reopened in 1996 after a $50 million reconstruction and refurbishment project.[1][2]

The Casino du Liban is majority-owned by Intra Investment Company, a Lebanese government-controlled company which is the remainder of the former Intra Bank, with the remainder of the shares held by private companies and individuals.[3] The casino is managed by London Clubs International, a subsidiary of Caesars Entertainment.[4]

Performers at the Casino's night club included Duke Ellington, Danny Thomas, Jacques Brel, and Julio Iglesias. Visitors at the casino included King Hussein of Jordan, Albert II, Prince of Monaco, the Shah of Iran, Aristotle Onassis, Omar Sharif,[5] and Osama bin Laden[6]

In his memoir of the international hotel business, Shadow of the Sun: Travels And Adventures in the World of Hotels, Peter J. Venison wrote that the Casino du Liban "was elegant, yet the cabaret was spectacular and rivaled anything that Las Vegas could offer".[7] He also described it as a backdrop of a James Bond novel where clientele from the richest elite of European and Arabian societies ventured into the casino in formal black-tie attire.[8]

In literature
  • Captain from Corfu by Muriel Maddox
"A tour of the city was planned and that evening dinner at the Casino du Liban."
  • The Man in the Middle by Hugh Atkinson
"The Casino du Liban was set on a cliff, outside Beirut on the coast road."
  • Danger and Opportunity: An American Ambassador's Journey Through the Middle East by Edward Djerejian, former United States Ambassador to Syria and Israel
"One of my early impressions of the contrasts of life in Lebanon was my first visit to the Casino du Liban—a luxurious gambling and entertainment spot in maamlten on the Mediterranean coast north of Beirut."

References
  1. "Casino du Liban - History". Archived from the original on 2013-06-16. Retrieved 2017-09-17.
  2. Lebanon Casino project gets 74 bids UPI archives October 4, 1994
  3. State-Owned Enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa: Engines of Development and Competitiveness? By OECD pp96-98
  4. Lebanon's historic Casino du Liban gambles with online venture The New Arab January 16, 2017
  5. The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, and the International Drug Traffic By Jonathan Marshall
  6. Bin Laden: The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of the Most Notorious Terrorist in History By Adam Robinson
  7. Venison, Peter J. Shadow of the Sun: Travels And Adventures in the World of Hotels, page 235
  8. Venison, Peter J. Shadow of the Sun: Travels And Adventures in the World of Hotels, page 235


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