The Ridotto: Masks, Cards, and Courtesans. The Nights When Venice Sold Everything

In 1638, while much of Europe was still hunting witches or hanging whores, Venice did what Venice always did: it opened a casino.

They called it The Ridotto — “the private room” — but everyone knew what it really was: an officially licensed pleasure machine. Not just for gambling, but for everything that could be bought, traded, or seduced.

Behind its doors, hidden near the church of San Moisè, nobles wearing masks wagered fortunes over bassetta et faro while sipping hot chocolate, their gloved hands caressing both cards and thighs. Gold coins clinked on marble tables. Perfume and sweat mixed in the air. But no one came here just for cards. The real currency moved between the masked courtesans and their wealthy, reckless patrons.

This was the playground of Venice’s most dangerous women — the cortigiane oneste. They weren’t prostitutes. They were artists. They knew poetry, politics, and pillow talk equally well. They didn’t sell their bodies — they sold influence.

Among the most famous players was a young, ambitious gambler named Giacomo Casanova. In his memoirs, he admitted losing entire fortunes at the Ridotto’s tables, only to recover them hours later in private rooms upstairs, where certain debts could be “renegotiated” after intimate transactions.

The Ridotto wasn’t a vice hidden from the state. It was the state. Venice taxed every coin, licensed every brothel, and monitored every scandal — turning lust into one more export, alongside silk and salt.

But these nights came with a price. Young noblemen lost entire family fortunes in a few nights. Dowries vanished. Political alliances collapsed. And always, hovering behind the thick velvet curtains, the shadow of blackmail.

Foreign ambassadors often deployed courtesans as spies, extracting secrets during post-coital whispers. At least two major diplomatic scandals between Venice and Austria began with pillow talk in private Ridotto chambers.

By the 1770s, as Venice’s power weakened, so did the Ridotto. When Napoleon arrived in 1797, it closed its doors forever. The building still stands today, quietly absorbed into the Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal. Tourists walk by without a clue.

But if you stand still long enough, you can almost hear it: the soft shuffle of cards, the muffled moans behind locked doors, and the careful calculations of men who came to gamble, but often lost far more than money.

Because in Venice, everything had a price.
And the house always won.