The Bellagio: The Casino That Played Itself

The most filmed casino on earth, and the only one that ever gave a heist crew the run of the building.

When the Bellagio opened in October 1998 it was reported as the most expensive hotel ever built, a roughly 1.6 billion dollar bet by Steve Wynn that Las Vegas could sell elegance as hard as it sold excess. Its signature is the lake out front: the Fountains of Bellagio, an eight acre performance of water, light and music that runs every evening and costs spectators nothing, which makes it the best value on the entire Strip by a distance.

The Ocean's connection

Three years after opening, the Bellagio became the leading lady of Ocean's Eleven. Nearly half the film was shot on the property with full overnight access: the casino floor, the lobby with its ceiling of two thousand hand-blown glass flowers, the Conservatory's seasonal gardens, the fine art gallery and the Picasso restaurant all play themselves. The famous vault was a Burbank set, and the fountain finale, the crew watching the water dance to Clair de Lune, turned the hotel's front lawn into one of modern cinema's most recognisable closing shots. The property returned for Terry Benedict's office in Ocean's Thirteen.

The gambler's Bellagio

Beyond the cameras, the Bellagio matters to gambling history as the home of Bobby's Room, the high-stakes poker enclosure named for Bobby Baldwin where the biggest publicly known cash games in America ran for two decades. The poker room made the Bellagio the de facto capital of professional poker between World Series seasons, and the whales who visit its baccarat salons are the modern heirs of the Kerry Packer era described in the High Roller Files.

It is also, fittingly for this site, a monument to the house edge: the fountains, the glass, the gardens and the art were all paid for by the same arithmetic priced on the Loot Board. Beautiful buildings are what a few percent per bet looks like after thirty years.