Menton’s Casino: A Seaside Building Designed Around Sunlight and Swimming

Menton’s municipal casino belonged to a change in Riviera leisure. Its original programme included a seawater swimming pool and solarium alongside the indoor social rooms. The sea was something visitors could engage with physically, as well as a view from a window.

According to the regional heritage inventory, the council authorised the new building on 13 March 1933. Construction began that November and finished in February 1934. Architect Roger Seassal had already worked on Cannes’ Palm Beach casino and the Monte-Carlo Beach hotel, placing Menton within a wider practice of designing coastal leisure buildings.

A changing relationship with the water

The inventory contrasts these outdoor facilities with the more inward-facing social spaces of Menton’s earlier casinos. It also records later changes: the pool became a terrace, rooms changed use, and a comprehensive restoration took place in 2015. The original swimming programme therefore belongs to the building’s history rather than a present-day facilities list.

The architectural practice Design Studio describes its restructuring project in terms of reopening views toward the Mediterranean. Its brief covered public interiors, facade repainting and interventions in the external volumes. The practice placed the gaming room centrally and described Le Brummell as a small theatre capable of supporting daytime gatherings and evening activity.

The two records make an interesting pair. Seassal’s programme brought the body outdoors through bathing and sun exposure; the later design account emphasises sightlines and the distribution of rooms. Both treat the coastline as a design resource. That continuity is more revealing than an undated claim that the casino has simply preserved its original appearance.

For an architectural reading of the property, the useful question is how indoor rooms, terraces and the horizon meet. A room can change function while its relationship with light and water remains central to the building’s appeal.

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