Casino de la Forêt, Casino and convention center in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, France.
Casino de la Forêt is a gaming and convention center in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage that combines betting facilities with meeting spaces. The building houses multiple halls, a restaurant called La Brasserie la Forêt, gaming tables, and slot machines under one roof.
The first wooden casino of 1904 stood near the Hôtel Westminster until 1906, then moved into Alphonse Daloz's 1864 wooden château. In 1912 the Société Anonyme des Grands Établissements commissioned Auguste Bluysen to build a second casino on that site, completed in 1913 in Anglo-Norman style. It served as an English military hospital during World War I, was enlarged in 1925, and largely destroyed in World War II; Louis Quételart rebuilt it in 1950.
The casino's name comes from the forest that surrounds Le Touquet-Paris-Plage. In the 1920s the dance hall hosted a daily orchestra, and the baccara tables drew the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII. The 1927 Art Deco Grand Restaurant de la Forêt had a dance floor and small orchestra stage at its centre.
The complex sits on place de l'Hermitage, with the tall Palais de la Forêt facade on the left and the lower casino wing, marked by gold letters, on the right. The glass-fronted entrance pavilion leads into the halls. The Molière and Ravel halls host large events, while the smaller Molière, Shakespeare, Schuman, Adenauer and Churchill rooms serve meetings.
In 2000, schoolchildren planted five trees meant to live a thousand years, one for each continent, encircled by a ring of flowers marking the Earth's circumference. A 2006 parterre of yews in front of the main entrance is clipped into geometric shapes by gardeners trained at the Château de Versailles.
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