The Venetian Resort Casino

From the Strip you enter through the Doge's Palace, set on a walkway over a large lagoon. Inside, Renaissance characters roam the public areas, singing opera, performing mime, jesting, even kissing hands. Walking from the hotel lobby into the casino is one of the great experiences in Las Vegas: overhead, reproductions of famous frescoes—highlighted by 24-karat-gold frames—adorn the ceiling; underfoot, the geometric design of the flat marble floor provides an Escher-like optical illusion of climbing stairs. Outside, the Venetian boasts a lake in front of the casino where visitors can take gondola rides and look out on the Strip. Inside, on the second floor of the building, you can climb aboard a gondola with a gondolier who'll sing opera as he paddles you through canals that line the Grand Canal Shoppes.

The History

Venice, Italy, may be hundreds of years old, but this resort designed to replicate it turned 10 in 2009. The resort, built on the site of the old Sands Hotel, opened on May 3, 1999 with a flutter of white doves, sounding trumpets, and singing gondoliers. Sophia Loren was on hand, too. At the time, the place cost $1.5 billion to build. Since then, owner Las Vegas Sands Corp. has added one tower (dubbed "Venezia at the Venetian"), and is working on another (between the Venetian and the Palazzo). Today, combined with the adjacent Sands Expo Convention Center and the Palazzo, the Venetian is a part of the largest hotel and resort complex in the world, featuring more than 7,000 hotel rooms and suites.