The method
How do we know the door closed in 1774?
How can we say that with any confidence? Only because nothing goes up on a single reading. A date has to appear in two sources that owe each other nothing before we will print it, and where a law is being quoted we go to the published text of the law rather than to somebody's account of it. When the record will not resolve, you will find us saying as much in the paragraph itself, since a tidy sentence that hides a doubt is worse than an untidy one that admits it.
That 1774 — the year Venice voted to shut the Ridotto — stands because two separate civic histories agree on both the year and the vote.
What we read
Four families of sources carry nearly everything here: legislation in its published form; digitised period newspapers, where a phrase like 'the race that stops a nation' can actually be dated; etymological dictionaries, for words like casino — a diminutive of casa, a little house; and civic or institutional histories of the rooms themselves.
Excluded on principle
This is a history of a room, not an invitation into one, so four things never appear:
- instructions for playing any game
- odds, tips or anything resembling them
- recommendations of venues, apps or operators
- links to any gambling operator
A notebook is only honest if it keeps its crossings-out where you can see them.
Corrections, kept in the margins
If we have a date, a name or a statute wrong, write to Frances Keogh at [email protected]. Corrections that check out are made on the page itself, with a dated note in the margin recording what changed and when — the mistake is not quietly overwritten.
This is a quiet site. Pages are revised when the reading warrants it — a new statute consulted, an older newspaper run digitised — not on a schedule, and we would rather leave a page alone than freshen it to look busy.
Who pays for the notebook?
The editor, and no one else. Every cost Ridotto Notes runs up comes out of Frances Keogh's own funds — not an advertiser's, not an affiliate's, not an operator's. No place on these pages was bought, no criticism blunted for money, no omission purchased. Should you want to reach us, the editorial address is the single route there is.