“Macau was a material and moral rubbish heap.”Īctually, mores haven’t changed much since that time. Aliens were flocking across the border and right as rain, the Portuguese king’s coffers quickly started filling up. Yet, even back in the 19 th century, residents of Hong Kong and southern China already found the appeal too difficult to resist. They decided to tap into vice as a reliant way to secure additional money, and gambling houses were among the approved activities allowed under a new decree.īy the account of Camilo Pessanha, a Portuguese poet who lived in Macau at the time, the little backward settlement was quickly transformed into a “material and moral rubbish heap.” There was none of the glitz or kitsch of Macau today, and that would continue for a while. How Did Macau Become the Gambling Capital of the World ?īack in 1840, when Macau was ruled by the Portuguese, the local administrators were looking for additional sources of revenue to add to the king’s coffers. But first, let’s note down a few key facts about Macau and its recent history. Its transformation began in the 1960s when one of the patrons of gambling, Stanley Ho, created the perfect environment in which casinos would develop and blossom into a multi-billion industry. Of course, Macau wasn’t always the gambling hub it is today. Property tycoons and media moguls are helicoptered in to splurge generous amounts of cash on a high-stakes game of baccarat and Hollywood often picks the city’s casinos to shoot sessions of popular movies.

None of these descriptions do the city justice today because Macau is the gambling capital of the world and there is little doubt about that. In fact, to outsiders from the west, the city was often described as Asia’s Monte Carlo, one of the first European casinos, or simply the Las Vegas of the East, but that only happened in the 20 th century. What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase “gambling capital of the world”? Well, it is not Las Vegas, even though Macau, the one and true holder of the title, was previously compared to the neon-lit city tucked away in the Nevada desert.įor a long while, though, Macau wasn’t called the capital of anything.

Does mgm have casino in macau