Front of the house · 0–8 m
Canal Room
Grachtkamer
Tall windows straight onto the water, shutters that still work, and boats going past at eye level all evening.
- Sleeps
- 2
- Size
- 22 m²
- Facing
- The canal
From €245 a night
0 m Zwanengracht, Amsterdam de gracht
A casino hotelfour metres wide.
Het Anker Casino Hotel is a fictional Amsterdam casino hotel in a 1687 canal house: twenty-six casino hotel rooms stacked up a staircase nobody would build today, dinner in the courtyard, and a nine-table casino in the back house — thirty-two metres from the water, which is as far as the lot goes.
0–32 m The house het huis
Four metres wide
and thirty-two deep,
because of a tax.
Het Anker is imagined as a casino hotel that could only be this shape.
Amsterdam taxed its canal houses on frontage, so the city built narrow and went backwards instead: a front room on the water, a staircase that is really a ladder with ambitions, a courtyard in the middle, and a separate back house at the end of the lot. This casino hotel uses all of it. The casino is in the back house, thirty-two metres from the canal, and you cross an open courtyard in the weather to reach it — which does more to make people think twice than any sign would.
- 15:00
- Let in at the front door
- 0 m
- 17:00
- Something cold in the front room
- 0–8 m
- 19:00
- Dinner, courtyard doors open
- 14–26 m
- 21:00
- The casino opens in the back house
- 32 m · 18+
- 08:00
- Breakfast, bells from two directions
- 0–8 m
You have to walk across a courtyard in the rain to reach the casino. That is the design.
26Casino hotel rooms
09Tables in the casino
4,2 mFrontage on the canal
78Stairs, top to bottom
0–26 m Casino hotel rooms de kamers
Twenty-six rooms,
no lift, no apology.
Beams left exposed, floors that slope the way three hundred years of soft ground makes them slope, and windows that open onto either the canal or the courtyard. Every casino hotel room is a different shape.
Middle of the lot · 14–26 m
Courtyard Room
Binnenplaatskamer
Quieter, looking down into the courtyard and the one enormous tree that has been there longer than the plumbing.
- Sleeps
- 2
- Size
- 28 m²
- Facing
- The courtyard
From €310 a night
Top of the house · 0 m, 18 m up
The Hoist Loft
Hijszolder
Two rooms in the attic where goods were winched in off the canal. The hoist beam is still there and still works.
- Sleeps
- 3
- Size
- 44 m²
- Facing
- Both ways
From €520 a night
Rates in euros, including breakfast and 9% VAT. Amsterdam tourist tax is charged separately. Casino entry is never bundled into a room rate.
32 m The casino · 18+ het achterhuis
Nine tables,
across
the courtyard.
The casino occupies the whole back house: one long room on the old warehouse floor, nine casino tables, a bar under the beams and windows onto the courtyard. No machines, no screens, no music. It is the furthest room in the building from the front door, and reaching it takes about ninety seconds and a coat.
RouletteTwo wheels, single zero
BlackjackThree casino tables, hand-dealt
Punto bancoTwo tables, hosted
PokerTwo tables, cash game
21:00 Casino opens 01:30 Last hand 02:00 Casino closes
How casino play works here →18+ Every visitor to a licensed Dutch casino is checked against Cruks, the national exclusion register, and must show ID. In this concept the casino door does the same, and you set your own limit with the host before you sit down.
ACHTERHUIS · 32 M
The last room on the lot, and the only one you get wet reaching.
No machines · No screens · Casino entry 18+
14–26 m Casino hotel dining eten en drinken
The middle
of the house.
One kitchen serves the whole casino hotel from the old back kitchen, with the courtyard doors open from April to October and firmly shut the rest of the year.
Daily · 07:30–23:00
The front room
Coffee and apple cake on the canal side, open to the street as well as to casino hotel guests. Six tables, and they go quickly.
Plan a stay →Nightly · 18:00–02:00
The beam bar
The bar inside the casino, under the original roof beams. Dutch gin, a short wine list, and a longer list of drinks with nothing in them.
See the casino →0 m Out the front door de stad
Everything is
a bridge or two
away.
The casino hotel is on a quiet canal in the middle of the ring, which means most of Amsterdam is a fifteen-minute walk and none of it needs a car.
8 minutes on foot
The small museums
Three canal houses within a few streets that are open as museums, all of them roughly this shape, all of them worth an hour.
12 minutes by boat
The eastern islands
Out past the working harbour to the docklands, where the warehouses are new and the water is much wider.
Saturdays · from 09:00
The market
Cheese, herring, flowers and a queue for stroopwafels made in front of you. Go early and eat as you walk.
18 minSchiphol, by train
9 minCentraal Station, on foot
0 spacesNo car park. It's a canal.
26 bikesOne per room, no charge
2 nights Casino hotel package arrangement
The Narrow House.
The stay most people take at this casino hotel: a canal room, dinner in the middle of the house, bikes for both days, and an introduction to the casino if you want one.
Check dates →- Canal Room2 nights
- Breakfast, both morningsFront room
- Dinner for twoThree courses
- BikesThroughout
- Casino introductionOptional · 18+
- From€790
? Casino FAQ veelgestelde vragen
Casino
questions.
What this casino hotel page is, who may enter the casino, and how casino gambling works in the Netherlands.
No. Het Anker Casino Hotel is an invented Amsterdam casino hotel, built to demonstrate casino hotel content and responsive web design. It takes no bookings, holds no gambling licence and processes no payments. The canal, the rates and the casino are all fictional.
No. Land-based casino gambling in the Netherlands is a state monopoly operated by Holland Casino, and everything is supervised by the Kansspelautoriteit. A privately run casino hotel could not open its own casino floor, in a canal house or anywhere else — and a listed seventeenth-century building would have its own opinions about it too.
Online gambling became licensable. The Remote Gambling Act opened a regulated online market on 1 October 2021, with licences issued by the Kansspelautoriteit. Land-based casinos were not part of that change and remain with Holland Casino. Untargeted advertising for online gambling was then banned from 1 July 2023.
The Dutch central exclusion register. Every licensed casino and betting operator must check each visitor against it before letting them play, and anyone can register themselves voluntarily to be locked out of all licensed gambling for a chosen period. It would apply to any real casino floor in a Dutch casino hotel. This page performs no such check.
No, and most guests do not. The casino is a separate building at the far end of the lot, open five hours a night, reached across an open courtyard. Casino entry is never bundled into a room rate and nothing about the stay assumes you will play.
Decide a limit in money and in time before you cross the courtyard, and only play with money you can afford to lose. Never borrow to gamble and never chase a loss. If it stops being fun, stop. In the Netherlands, free and confidential help is available from Loket Kansspel, and anyone can register with Cruks to exclude themselves from all licensed gambling.