The Casino Estoril is the largest of Portugal’s casinos with 21 gaming tables and some 1,000 slot and video poker machines. In fact, it may well be Europe’s largest casino, as the Portuguese claim, but with the building programs going on that might not last much longer.
One of the things that makes the Casino Estoril so different amongst not just Portugal’s casinos but the others of Europe is the role it had from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. Estoril was quite the most fashionable part of Europe for a certain set. After World War One, Dr. Salazar set Portugal up as a Fascist State: that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would make a place popular, we know. However, what it did mean was that as the various problems arose in Central Europe, the various revolutions and so on, and then WWII itself, Portugal was seen as a safe haven for those with money. So there were a lot of dispossessed aristocrats, even some royalty, that made their way to Estoril over those years. The fact that Portugal (like Spain) was not in WWII either helped as well. It wasn’t until Grace Kelly’s marriage to Prince Rainier after WWII that Monaco…
