Municipal casino Campione d’Italia

Campione d’Italia

Mario Botta
2007

Profiles of low pastel-colored houses, roofs leaning against each other to form a single fragmented canopy to the eye, and balconies protected by awnings are the typical landscape of almost all towns overlooking the great lakes of northern Italy. In Campione d’Italia, a tiny Italian exclave on Swiss territory, this view is interrupted by the presence of the municipal casino.

Botta’s work replaces the old building erected in the early 1900s after nearly a century, but it attracts criticism right away for its bulk, which is entirely out of scale with the rest of the town.

The architect, however, guesses the power relations: as much as the new structure towers like a medieval castle over the village surrounding it, the gambling house it contains predominates over the economy of the municipality of Campione and its inhabitants.

The municipality is the sole partner in the casino, which makes the fortunes of both for a long time but also decrees its disgrace. In 2018, after accumulating debts of 132 million euros, the casino went bankrupt. Shortly after that, the municipality also declared financial collapse. Chain layoffs followed, both on one side and the other, and severe inefficiencies and inconveniences for the population: all families in Campione have at least one or two members employed by the two institutions.

In 2022, the Casino reopened its doors after three years of inactivity. In a symbiotic relationship that perhaps also emerges architecturally, the village must rely on the gambling house to survive, and vice versa.