The Printed Room is the casino of The Printed Home and a room of this house like any other: the long loft over the old print shop, under the same slates as the beds below it. It shares the hotel's address and its staff, and nobody steps outside to reach it.
From the desk, go through the door behind the old counter to the back stair. Two flights up, the stair ends on a long landing, and twenty steps along it is the loft door. Somebody from the casino stands at that door for every minute the room is open.
- Open
- Wednesday to Sunday, 20:00 to 01:00
- The room
- Five tables and a bar with six stools
- Entry
- 18 and over, photo identification each visit
- Dress
- Dry and tidy; no wet sailing gear
The room under the roof
Five tables run down the middle of the loft in a line under the ridge, since that is the only place a tall person can stand without thinking about the beams. On a Wednesday two of them are usually open. On a Saturday in August all five are, and the casino floor is as full as it gets, which is about forty people.
Until 1974 this was a sail loft, and it still looks like one. The oak floor carries the chalk lines and pin holes the sailmakers used to mark out canvas, the roof is open to the rafters, and the hoist door in the gable is a window over Rue Haute now. There is no music. You hear rain on the slates, glasses at the bar and the church bell across the roofs. The old shop clock hangs above the door where everyone can see it, and staff give the time to anyone who asks, the first time they ask. Plenty of gaming rooms hide the hour; the casino at the top of this house keeps it on the wall.
The dress code is short, and it exists for a reason that only makes sense in a harbour town. People come up straight off a boat in dripping oilskins, and salt water leaves marks on old oak that never come out. Shorts are fine in summer. Sailing boots are not.
Age and identification
Nobody under 18 plays in The Printed Room, on any night. The line is set by French law, the Code de la sécurité intérieure, articles L320-7 and L320-8, which keep minors out of gambling even when they are emancipated and require the casino to stop them taking part.
Identification is checked at the loft door on every visit, not once per stay. A guest who ate at Upper Case an hour earlier still shows a document, and so does the person who checked them in that afternoon. The door accepts a passport, a national identity card or a residence permit, each with a photograph. A picture of a document on a phone is not a document, and the host will say so politely.
Under-18s do not come up the second flight at any hour. That covers the afternoons when the loft is shut and being swept, and the mornings when a curious child wants a closer look at the hoist beam. The beam can be seen perfectly well from the street.
Limits and stopping
On the casino floor, the person at your table is the one who agrees a limit with you. Name an amount before you sit down; it is written on a card at your table and kept to, even if you ask later that evening for it to go up. Anyone who would like help picking a figure can ask, and the staff will offer before you do if you seem unsure.
Stopping is arranged in person at the desk downstairs, never in the loft and never by telephone. Self-exclusion takes effect the same evening and covers the whole house, because the host at the loft door is told before the room opens. It ends only when you come back to that same desk, in person, and ask.
No credit is given in the loft. There is no cash machine anywhere in the building, and the bar under the roof stops serving half an hour before the tables close.
This website offers no gaming
The Printed Room is a land-based casino inside a hotel in Honfleur, Normandy, and nothing more. This website only describes the room and the house around it: no game is played on it, no bet is placed through it, nobody holds an account here and not a cent changes hands.
To play, you come to 41 rue Haute, climb the back stair, show a document at the loft door and sit down at a table. That is the only way into the casino, and no part of it happens on this page.