CAESARS PALACE LAS VEGAS, NV
An Empire Expands
THE COLOSSAL DESTINATION RESORT COMES OF AGE CELEBRATING THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE AND THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
by Scott A. Aruti

At the very heart of the Las Vegas Strip resides the legendary Caesars Palace, an architectural marvel among world resorts renowned for their originality and beauty. This 85-acre gaming and entertainment oasis—in many ways, a Sin City landmark—teems with excitement and luxury, seducing a decidedly more upscale clientele due to its “old-world Vegas” charm and elegance. Magnificent hotel guest rooms and suites, diverse restaurants and cafes, a 4.5-acre Garden of the Gods pool and garden area, world-class health spa and beauty salon, unparalleled shopping destinations, late-night lounges, indoor and garden wedding facilities, 240,000 square-feet of premium meeting and convention space and a 4,100-seat Colosseum theater spotlighting the likes of Celine Dion and Elton John are all part of the world that is Caesars Palace.

An evolutionary expansion has recently energized Caesars to keep the property competing with the dramatically changing Strip megaresort phenomenon. On August 12, 2005, the new 949-room and suite Augustus Tower structure opened, named for the Caesar whose reign brought years of prosperity and peace to the Roman Empire. The tower boasts three new wedding venues, an all-new VIP lounge, an expanded new hotel reception desk, added retail outlets and the Augustus Café 24-hour restaurant. The tower’s culinary crown jewel will be the namesake restaurant of Michelin three-star chef Guy Savoy. Opening in coming months, Guy Savoy Caesars Palace, according to Caesars’ officials, will be designed to offer “an exquisite dining experience and possibly brining a new dimension of fine dining to Las Vegas.” Also scheduled for residence in the Augustus Tower is an all-new hotel spa, targeted for completion in 2006.

Anticipating increased restaurant demand from Colosseum guests, Caesars spurred a new wave of celebrity chef establishments with the March 17, 2003 opening of Bradley Ogden, the namesake restaurant of the famed Bay-area chef. In September 2004, chef Bobby Flay opened his first restaurant beyond the confines of New York City when he debuted Mesa Grill at the Palace. It features the award-winning chef’s contemporary southwest-inspired cuisine for lunch, dinner and weekend brunch.

Caesars Palace Las Vegas maintains the distinction among chic shopping circles by housing what is widely believed to be the highest yielding shopping destination in the U.S.—The Forum Shops. The resort recently added 60 new upscale retailers and restaurateurs to its existing 100 fine merchants and dining establishments. The expansion, designed in three levels, extended the facility eastward to prized frontage on Las Vegas Boulevard. As a must-see destination in its own right, this lavish shopping plaza is now home to a who’s who in the world of fine design and exciting restaurants. It includes the Palm, La Salsa, Bertolini’s Authentic Italian Trattoria, the Cheesecake Factory, Planet Hollywood, Stage Deli, Donald Pliner, Juicy Couture, Custo Barcelona, Giuseppe Zanotti, Peter Max, Davante Optical, Casa Fuente, Agent Provocateur, Villa Reale (Art de Mexico), Chrome Hearts, Harry Winston and more.

Just shy of the year 2005, Caesars Palace welcomed two stories of late-night indulgence with the opening of PURE nightclub. Owned in part by Celine Dion, Shaquille O’Neal, Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf and nightlife pacesetter Pure Management Group, the 36,000-square-foot club also encompasses the Pussycat Dolls Lounge, which opened its doors in April of 2005. Named the Number One Hippest Hotspot in the nation by E! Entertainment Television, PURE features a spacious outdoor terrace surrounded by the lights of Sin City. The venue offers three distinct experiences, each with its own DJ, sound system and style; an ultra-trendy décor, exclusive VIP room and glass elevator round out the PURE experience in a city that knows how to party.

Beyond the mind-numbing nightclub scene pulsing from PURE, more relaxing lounge settings are sprinkled throughout the property, beginning with the Seahorse Lounge. The aquatically themed venue features plush seating around a 1,700-gallon aquarium, home to its namesake Australian Potbelly Seahorses. In addition to a full beverage menu, the Seahorse presents itself as a popular meeting place from day through late evening, featuring a selection of hors d’oeuvres.

Shadow: A Bar at Caesars has been a high-energy attraction during this resort’s expansion period, featuring shadow dancers performing behind backlit sheer screens. World champion flair bartenders juggle bottles, toss limes, twirl glasses and perform back-flips as they prepare beverages and pour towers of cocktails. The Terrazza Lounge, showcasing a stylish live piano trio, and the Galleria Bar, spotlighting the talents of vocalists performing varied selections and stylings, cap off Caesar’s electric nightlife draw.

Adjoining pedestrian bridges that span the bull’s-eye of the Las Vegas Strip—the bustling intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road—is the five-acre, open-air Roman Plaza. The Plaza is home to Viale, a 230-seat Italian trattoria restaurant with terraces that overlook the Las Vegas Strip, an adjacent 250-seat bar and an outdoor event/entertainment amphitheater. The amphitheater debuted on October 2, 2004, with a tripleheader boxing event broadcast nationally and internationally. A month later, the amphitheater hosted the Strip’s first open-air ice-skating rink for holiday visitors. The amphitheater is equipped with 1,700 permanent seats on two sides and can be expanded to more than triple that capacity to suit varied configurations.

Inspired by Rome’s famed Baths of Caracalla, the Garden of the Gods features Roman rotundas, graceful fountains and classic statues surrounding four large, heated swimming pools, two outdoor whirlpool spas, two outdoor wedding chapels and lavish gardens. In 2000, the Garden of the Gods was named by the Travel Channel among the World’s Best Pools. The area also provided a spectacular photo location for Sports Illustrated magazine’s 2001 Swimsuit Edition, and a dramatic backdrop for the 2003 motion picture Intolerable Cruelty, starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones.

Aside from these exciting entertainment and visceral wonders, the spacious, elegant guest rooms of Caesars Palace all feature marble- or granite-finished bathrooms, whirlpool baths or soaking tubs, in-room televised gaming instruction, electronic in-room guest safes and television sets equipped with digital movie systems. High-speed in-room Internet connections are standard amenities in every Caesars guest room.

Catering to the clientele who demand nothing short of perfection, the hotel offers a variety of suites that go above and beyond the accommodations of standard guest rooms. Luxuries abound here, ranging from the two-story Fantasy suites (featured in the motion picture Rain Man) to the impeccably designed 22,000 square-foot Forum Tower penthouses and the 21,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom pool villa suite complex. Original works of fine art, premium linens, exquisite furnishings, private dining rooms, wet bars, in-room saunas, steam rooms, large whirlpool tubs and sophisticated home theater audio/visual systems pamper the most discriminating of guests. Individual suites boast special amenities such as a climate-controlled wine grotto, indoor golf driving-range simulator, putting greens, cigar smoking lounge with custom ventilation/extraction system and workout rooms.
The serious golf enthusiast will be more than “at home” at Caesars Palace. Named by Golf Magazine as one of the top 20 golf courses built in the U.S. since 1959 (Number One in Nevada) and described as golf’s “hidden treasure” in Sports Illustrated magazine, Cascata—Italian for “waterfall”—is a regal golfing experience. Located minutes from the Caesars resort corridor, this 18-hole championship course meanders 7,200 yards, set among dramatic red rock canyons and overlooking desert vistas. Its Tuscan-inspired clubhouse features a signature waterfall running through its center and boasts a full-service dining room and bar, a cigar room, banquet facilities, golf shop and locker rooms.

Caesar’s posh gaming scene begins with a sophisticated race- and sportsbook boasting more than 120 video screens—many with computer character-generated wagering information linked by 20 miles of cable to broadcast sources offering up to 90 different broadcasts at any given time.

The Palace houses more than 127,000 square-feet of public space in distinct casinos; encompassing these areas are the Palace Casino, Forum Casino and the high-limit Palace Court casinos for table-game and slot players. Players may choose from any of more than 1,700 slot machines, ranging from one cent to $500 denominations. Among the most popular are the no-limit, dollar-progressive Million Dollar Babies machines, whose jackpot grows upward from $1 million until it is won.

Dining at Caesars Palace is nothing short of an epicurean holiday, with 26 restaurants and cafes located in the hotel and in the Forum Shops. In 1992, the Palace joined with the Forum Shops and chef Wolfgang Puck to launch Spago—spurring a trend of chef-headlined restaurants that continues to energize the fine dining scene throughout the city.

In addition to the aforementioned openings of the Bradley Ogden namesake restaurant and Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill, acclaimed French chef Jean-Marie Josselin brings seafood and a taste of the islands to Caesars Palace with 808. The Empress Court is Caesars’ elegant retreat for fine Chinese dining, while the Hyakumi Japanese restaurant and Sushi Bar offers a choice of prix-fixe, teppanyaki or a la carte dining.

What would a resort boasting the name Caesars Palace be without fine Italian dining choices? The Terrazza answers the “call of the Caesars” with a dramatically beautiful architectural setting for Italian fine cuisine. The Café Lago serves an extensive 24-hour à la carte menu and offers buffet dining during breakfast, lunch and dinner hours. The restaurant seats more than 500 guests in its multitiered dining room and offers an additional 100 guests al fresco, overlooking the spectacular Garden of the Gods pool area.

The Cypress Street Marketplace showcases the talents of Caesars Palace chefs in a festive, marketplace setting. Guests may choose from the world's most popular cuisines, including Japanese, Chinese, Mediterranean, Southern U.S., French and Californian.

Yet all it takes is one glance at the grand entrance into this lavish destination resort—replete with immense fountains, dramatic gabled pediments and Corinthian columns overlooking the Las Vegas Boulevard entranceway—to undoubtedly be convinced why Caesars Palace continues to stand out among the towering behemoths of the Strip. A regal new porte cochere, added July 2004, crowns the Palace doorway, which has welcomed princes and presidents, vacationers and show business celebrities. At the entrance to the Caesars Palace people mover is The World of Caesar—a rotunda that houses a miniature city of Rome as it may have looked 2,000 years ago.

To discover how the world that is Caesars Palace looks and pampers today, call the property at (877) 427-7243 or log on to www.caesarspalace.com.

RATE THIS ARTICLE! How relevant, educational or entertaining was this article? Extremely. I'll refer back to it in the future. Very. Enjoyed reading it. Somewhat. OK read, but not very memorable. Not very. Didn't grab me or hold my attention. Nothing new here. Not at all. Didn't do a single thing for me. Boring and/or poorly written. CURRENT RATINGS EXTREMELY VERY SOMEWHAT NOT VERY NOT AT ALL TOTAL VOTES: 50