The rules of entry · method
We score the door, not the decor.
Access is scored out of ten. Five conditions, two points each. Every point is traceable to something the operator publishes.
The score answers one question: how realistically does an ordinary visitor get inside? It is not a quality rating. A room can be the most beautiful on the Riviera and score four, and one of them does.
01 / 2pt
Door cost
Two points if entry is free. One if there is a published admission fee. Nought if the only way in is to buy a room or a table at serious money. We count the door, not the spend once you are through it.
02 / 2pt
Dress code
Two points if there is no code in practice. One if a code is published and applied. Nought if a jacket or equivalent is genuinely required to pass. Note that no address in this dossier currently scores nought here: SBM's published text has no jacket rule, whatever the legend says.
03 / 2pt
Booking
Two points if you can walk in off the square with no arrangement. One if booking is advisable or needed for the part worth seeing. Nought if you must book far ahead to get in at all.
04 / 2pt
Crowding
Two points if it is quiet. One if it is heavy at peak. Nought if it is heavy whenever it is open. This is the softest of the five and the one most open to argument, because it is the only one not written down anywhere. We say so rather than dress it up as data.
05 / 2pt
Exclusions
Two points if nobody is turned away. One if there is an age or identity check only. Nought if an entire category of person is refused outright, whatever they wear and whatever they pay. In Monaco this is not hypothetical, which is the reason the dossier exists in this shape.
Worked example
The Casino de Monte-Carlo: one point for the door (20 euros is a published fee, not free), one for dress (published and enforced), two for booking (walk in), nought for crowding (Place du Casino is busy from opening), nought for exclusions (a category of person is refused entirely). Four out of ten. The most famous casino in Europe is the hardest address in this dossier to walk into, and the score is simply that sentence with the arithmetic shown.
Ties
Two addresses currently tie at eight and two tie at seven. We leave them tied. Inventing a tiebreak would imply a precision the method does not have.
What the score deliberately ignores
Room quality, food, service, spa, view, thread count, and whether you enjoyed yourself. Michelin stars appear in the files as facts because the Michelin guide covers Monaco and the stars are checkable, but they earn no access points: a three-star kitchen makes an address harder to get into, not easier.
What we will not do
- Take money, hospitality or a free night from a venue in this dossier. Nobody has offered; the answer would be no.
- Run affiliate links. Every outbound link goes to an operator's own site and earns us nothing.
- Print a number we cannot source. Where SBM's own pages give two different figures, we print both and name the contradiction.
- Fill a gap with a plausible guess. The Hermitage file has three holes in it and they stay marked as holes.
- Tell you how to gamble, or suggest that you should.
When we checked
Every fact in this dossier was checked against the operator's published pages on 17 July 2026. Door prices, opening hours and slot counts all move, and the Café de Paris works run to spring 2027, so treat any figure as of that date and check before you fly. We will send you a note when something changes.