Las Vegas is located in the middle of the arid Mojave Desert, at the southern tip of the state of Nevada.
Entertainment so dominates Las Vegas that it is the backbone of the city’s economy, creating vibrant hotel, retail and hospitality industries.

Las Vegas skyline

The city is divided into two halves – Downtown and the Strip.
Downtown (also known as ‘Glitter Gulch’ for the bright neon signs and millions of flashing lights) is the living embodiment of old Las Vegas.
Further south, the Strip is home to the latest, biggest and most ambitious casinos.

Las Vegas Nightlife
Nightlife is Las Vegas’ best-known pastime. At night the casinos and hotels burst into life. Casinos, restaurants and bars are packed with tourists from all over the world. Casino hotels tend to house not only the best-known stage shows but also all the late-night bars, nightclubs and live music.

Downtown Las Vegas

Downtown offers smaller, sometimes more charismatic, venues, while the enormous hotel complexes of the Strip offer a wide variety of entertainment options at each individual complex.

Las Vegas is a 24-hour city, with alcohol for sale at any time of day or night in restaurants, bars and shops. The legal drinking age is 21 years. The dress code at most casinos is casual, but most clubs deny entry to people wearing trainers or flip-flops.

All night-time entertainment happens within the hotel-casino complexes.
Bars: Most bars in Las Vegas feature extravagant entertainment, however they are just bars when compared to the lavish shows put on in the theatres and clubs there. The Bellagio’s Baccarat Bar serves luxurious cocktails against a backdrop of live piano music. Mandalay Bay’s, with it’s giant decapitated statue of Lenin, blood red velvet curtains, a 25ft long ice bar and vodka tastings in their walk-in freezer, serves over 100 varieties of vodka.
The Bar at Times Square recreates the feel of an old New York city pub with polished wood floors and nightly entertainment.

Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino

Casinos: Gamblers must be at least 21 years old and have proof of age and identity in the form of a driving licence, passport or other photo identification. Most casinos in Las Vegas do not have a dress code, although shoes and shirts are required. Some casinos worth visiting include the new Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino and Palms Casino Resort, a popular playground for the young and moneyed party crowd.

The slightly dingy but intimate Gold Spike offers low table limit and penny slots, giving a taste of what the city was like in the 1970s. The Golden Nugget has been a fixture of Downtown since 1946, and features the largest gold nugget in the world, weighing in at 61lb.

Caesars Palace

Clubs: A number of state-of-the-art clubs are offered by the major hotel-casinos. The minimum age for entry is usually 21 years and a dress code is often in place. One of the best-known clubs is Studio 54 which is modelled on the legendary New York nightclub of the 1970s and features live dancers, dance music and a collection of photographs taken at the original club. Pure, inside Caesars Palace, is one of the most popular clubs on The Strip. This 36,000sq ft venue offers clubbers the choice of three environments, themes and sounds, with all rooms interconnected by intimate passageways and an elevated glass-enclosed VIP room at the heart of the action.
The Palms Casino Resort houses another popular nightclub, Rain. This adult-only club features an elevated dance floor lit by a 14ft fireball and dancing fountains of water throb in time with the DJ.

The Mandalay Bay Events Centre

Live Music: Live music is another one of Las Vegas’ legendary forms of entertainment, being the former home to superstars like Sammy Davis Jnr, Frank Sinatra and Liberace. The Theatre for the Performing Arts, Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, is home to major touring rock and popular acts. The Orleans Arena, The Orleans Hotel and Casino, has hosted touring pop acts such as Willie Nelson, Neil Sedaka and Jerry Lewis. The Mandalay Bay Events Centre is a 12,000-seat sport and entertainment complex, the setting for superstar concerts, major sporting events and television specials. It has featured everyone from Steely Dan to Stevie Wonder to Paul McCartney and Wings.

Main Attractions

Wynn Las Vegas

Wynn Las Vegas
Erected on the spot where the legendary Desert Inn once stood, one of Las Vegas’ newest landmarks is the glamorous Wynn Las Vegas. Sheathed in coppery bronze reflecting the desert sun, this 42-storey megaresort boasts a huge casino, 2,700 guest rooms, an 18-hole professionally designed golf course, a fine art gallery and Las Vegas’ only fully authorised Ferrari-Maserati dealership. The centrepiece of the resort is a 150ft high mountain with a five-storey waterfall cascading into a man-made lake featuring The Lake of Dreams, a multimedia spectacular in an environmental theatre setting. The Wynn also has a 2,000-seat domed showroom with a circular stage, the first of its kind in the city and the home of Le Reve, the latest production from Franco Dragone, of Cirque du Soleil fame and the mastermind behind three of Las Vegas’ most popular shows. 

Bellagio

Bellagio
The Bellagio is one of Las Vegas’ best-known and most visited hotel-casinos. Covering a 10 acres oasis, the Bellagio features a mock northern Italian village on the shore, behind which looms the bulking mass of the large hotel. The hotel has 3,200 rooms and suites, 17 restaurants, six lounges, botanical gardens and six Mediterranean pool settings together with a 100,000 sq ft casino with over 2,000 slot machines and electronic games and over 100 table games. The Bellagio also has a fine art gallery which hosts contemporary art exhibits, as well as a 100,000 sq ft glass-encased shopping mall.

Freemont Street

Fremont Street and The Fremont Street Experience
Located Downtown, Fremont Street is a favourite nightly flocking ground for the city’s many tourists. Here you will find 10 casinos, over 60 restaurants and countless bars and lounges offering Old Las Vegas style. Peddlers sell silver jewellery and various crafts from their pushcart stalls. Perched 90ft above Fremont Street is a hi-tech overhead light and sound show stretching for five blocks (over 1,400ft) composed of one of the world’s largest and longest LED screens. 

MGM Grand

MGM Grand
Since its completion in 1993, the momentous MGM Grand has held the title of largest hotel in the world, with over 5,005 rooms. Its enormous Grand Garden Arena is a key venue for boxing matches in the USA. Other features include a 170,000sq ft casino, 15 restaurants, a coffee shop, a food court with five lounges, two showrooms, two wedding chapels, five pools including a flowing river pool, a lion habitat, a dance club and shopping complex. 

Caesars Palace
Caesars Palace sits in a lavish Roman setting, with Roman columns, grand staircases, manicured shrubbery, imported marble statuary and luxuriant fountains. Its two main casinos (totalling 129,750 sq ft), feature slot machines that feature prizes such as motorcycles and convertible cars, and jackpots that have reached more than $21million. 

Mirage

Mirage
The Mirage has an artificial volcano that erupts every 15 minutes during the evening. The setting is completed by an artificial lagoon with 54 artificial waterfalls that flow down the side of the volcano. As visitors make their way inside, they enter an indoor tropical rainforest, a dolphin habitat and a saltwater tropical aquarium. The hotel also has a pool and spa, eight restaurants, four lounge bar areas, a white tiger habitat, its famed Shadow Creek golf course and a casino which features over 2,000 slot machines.

Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino
Much of this hotel complex features actual canals, on which gondolas carry visitors up and down the waterways. The 120,000 sq ft casino features 2,500 slot machines and 122 table games, 18 restaurants, four pools and a fitness centre.

The Palazzo Las Vegas
This 53-storey extension of the Venetian has 3,025 suites, 375 concierge-level suites, six self-contained villas and a variety of designer restaurants, bars and clubs including the third location of Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club. Together with the Venetian and the Sands Expo Center, the Palazzo is the largest resort complex in the world. Home to the Strip’s first underground parking garage, the Palazzo is also the first of Las Vegas’s new generation of ultra-compact resorts.

Las Vegas Natural History Museum

Las Vegas Natural History Museum
The Las Vegas Natural History Museum brings the natural world of local Nevada wildlife to life, as well as ancient dinosaurs, marine life and more, through exhibits, displays and live exhibitions. The museum’s dinosaur exhibit features mechanical dinosaurs, including a 35ft long Tyrannosaurus Rex, as well as the exhibits detailing the evolution of life from fish to dinosaurs. The Wild Nevada Room explores the surprising diversity of life from the state’s own Mojave Desert. Replicas include rattlesnake, bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and burrowing rodents. The museum also has live animals on display, such as a gopher snake, a tarantula, a boa constrictor and scorpions.

Liberace Museum
The Liberace Museum, considered one of the best museums in Las Vegas, offers a view of the city’s cultural history by focusing on one of its most infamous entertainers. Liberace became a prominent musician in America and nowhere were his dazzling costumes and stage sets more at home than in Las Vegas. The museum is divided into two galleries. The first houses 18 of his 39 pianos (including his own Rhinestone-covered Baldwin piano and a rare, early English grand piano from 1788) as well as his car collection, including his one-of-a-kind Rolls Royce covered with mirror tiles etched with galloping horses. The second gallery houses costumes, stage props and candelabra.

Old Las Vegas Mormon State Historic Park

Old Las Vegas Mormon State Historic Park
Located north of Downtown, Old Las Vegas Mormon State Historic Park is the site of the original adobe fort used by the first Mormon settlers in the Las Vegas Valley. Built by missionaries from Salt Lake City in 1885, the fort was abandoned just a year later, due to the harsh conditions. A shed is the only remaining original building but the rest of the site has been reconstructed. 

Restaurants
Gastronomic – Drai’s, Eiffel Tower Restaurant, Le Cirque, NobHill, Okada, The Steakhouse, Trattoria Del Lupo, Wing Lei.
Business – Alexis Gardens Restaurant, Charlie Palmer Steak, Delmonico Steakhouse, Clarion Emerald Springs.
Trendy – Gonzalez y Gonzalez, JJ’s Boulangerie, Little Buddha, Mr Lucky’s, Noodles, Valentino.
Budget – California Pizza Kitchen, Courtyard Grill & Buffet, French Market Buffet, Fresh Harvest Cafe.