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Intra muros, Saint-MaloThebooksea

The cellar, three metres below the street

The Booksea Room

A barrel vault of about 1680, which the fire of 1944 did not reach and which nothing has been fixed to since.

This is a room of this house. It belongs to this house alone, bears no address of its own, and is reached without going into the street. The casino is the cellar, directly beneath the front rooms, under the same roof and behind the same front door.

From the desk in the hall you pass behind it and take the stair down: twelve steps, thirty paces in all, and not one of them outdoors. That door is kept by a member of staff for the whole of every open hour, and it is the only way in. The old chute through the street wall is still there, lit from inside, and is a hundred and forty millimetres across.

The vault under the front rooms, looking back towards the stair
The vault under the front rooms, looking back towards the stair.
Hall and cellar, with the walk between them The street door opens on the hall, with the desk to the right. The cellar stair descends behind the desk. Below, the vault under the front rooms is the gaming room; the back of the cellar holds the plant and the store. Hall level Street door Desk Cellar stair twelve steps Cellar Gaming room three tables, one counter barrel vault, seventeenth century thirty paces and twelve steps, within the house
The hall above, the cellar below, and the route drawn between them.
  • Hours Wednesday to Saturday, eight in the evening until midnight
  • Size Three tables and a counter with four stools
  • Age 18, photographic identification, checked on every visit
  • Dress Dry. The rampart is five minutes away and the sea comes over it.

The room

Three tables is what the vault takes and three is what it will take. On a Wednesday in January one is open. Through August all three are, and on those evenings a count is kept at the casino door, the vault being rated for twenty-four and the stair being single.

It is a vault, so it is a single curved space: granite, four and a half metres across at the springing, three and a bit at the crown, with the lining standing clear of the stone on its own frame and the gap lit so that the vault reads as the vault. The floor is the original rock, levelled with lime screed in 2024. There is no music, which guests remark on within about ten minutes. The casino keeps a clock at the stair end, and the staff are instructed to give the hour at the first asking.

About dress: dry. The rampart is five minutes from the door and on a spring tide in a westerly the sea comes over it onto people who were told that it would. The cellar floor is lime and it marks.

Age and identification

In France the casino age is 18 and this door applies it with nothing set aside for anybody, a guest two floors above included, and including on a quiet night with one table open.

Identification is produced at every visit, not once at the start of a stay. That includes the guest who ate at table an hour earlier and spoke to the person now on the door. A passport, a national identity card, a residence permit or an EU driving licence is accepted. A photograph of a card on a telephone screen is not the card, and the refusal is not a conversation that has ever been won.

Nobody below 18 enters the casino at any hour whatever, including the hours when the room is shut and being cleaned, and including a request to see the vault or the chute. People do ask, and rather often. There are photographs of both in the hall.

Of limits, and of stopping

A limit is arranged on the casino floor, by the person who is working it. Name your figure before you sit down and it is written and held to. Ask them to name one and they will, and it will be lower than the figure you had.

An evening is ended at the desk in the hall, in person. Never in the cellar, never by telephone, never in writing. Self-exclusion is signed at the hall desk, applies from that night, and is undone only in person at the same place. Nobody at the counter below can lift it and nobody will attempt to.

There is no credit of any kind on the casino floor, and there is no cash machine anywhere in this house. The nearest is by the Grande Porte, three minutes away, and the three minutes back in a January wind off the Channel have closed more evenings than any rule we could set down.

No play is conducted here

What exists is a vaulted room beneath a house inside the walls of Saint-Malo. That is the whole of what is being described. The site describes a house and a room beneath it. It conducts no play, receives no stake, maintains no account and transfers no funds.

To play you come to the rue de la Pie qui Boit, show identification at the door at the foot of the stair, and sit down. There is no other way in, and no part of it takes place on this page.