Las Vegas Strip

Las Vegas Spent $2.3 Billion Building a Spherical Concert Venue

The Sphere at The Venetian opened in September 2023 after five years of construction – a 111-metre-tall spherical building covered in the world’s largest LED display screen on the outside and the world’s largest LED screen on the inside. Residencies in 2026 include the Eagles, Metallica, No Doubt, and Kenny Chesney. Experiencing a show here is unlike any other concert venue on earth: the wraparound immersive visuals fill every surface of a 17,500-seat room. The ticket prices are correspondingly significant, but the Sphere is genuinely not comparable to anything else.

This is what Las Vegas does – takes an idea to an extreme that removes all comparison. The Strip is approximately 6.7 kilometres of Las Vegas Boulevard South through the unincorporated communities of Paradise and Winchester, Nevada. It contains twelve of the world’s fifteen largest hotels. The Fontainebleau, opened in 2024 at 67 stories, is the tallest building in the city. Everything in this ecosystem is designed to get you onto the casino floor and keep you there, including the deliberate absence of clocks inside casino buildings and exit routes that are always further than you think. None of this is hidden. All of it is the point.

What’s Actually Worth Your Time

The Bellagio Fountains are the best free attraction on the Strip: a choreographed water show from the 8.5-acre artificial lake in front of the resort, running every 15-30 minutes from early afternoon until midnight, set to music. The view from the pedestrian bridge at Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road is the best angle without paying for a restaurant table.

The High Roller Observation Wheel at the LINQ Promenade is 167 metres tall with slow-moving glass cabins that take 30 minutes for a full rotation. The view at dusk over the valley and surrounding Mojave Desert is the best available aerial perspective on Las Vegas without a helicopter. Alcohol is served in the cabins, which is either appealing or not depending on your approach to heights.

Fremont Street downtown (20 minutes north of the Strip) is the original Las Vegas – a pedestrianised strip under a 450-metre LED canopy with free hourly shows, older casinos with lower stakes, and a different energy from the Strip’s corporate scale. Go on a Friday evening.

The Sphere for any show currently running, if tickets remain available. Check sphere.lvtickets.com.

Eating

The Strip’s top-end restaurant portfolio is genuinely impressive. Thomas Keller’s Bouchon at The Venetian, Nobu at Caesars, and multiple Michelin-level operations from established chefs make this a serious food destination if you’re willing to pay hotel resort prices.

For something more accessible: the Hidden Pizza at the Cosmopolitan (not actually hidden – it’s on the 3rd floor, just away from the casino floor) does New York-style slices at non-Strip prices. In-N-Out Burger has locations near the Strip and is exactly what it should be. Hotel buffets, once a Las Vegas institution, significantly reduced in number after 2020 – verify current availability before planning around them.

Day Trips

Red Rock Canyon, 25 minutes west by car, is one of the better sandstone canyon landscapes in Nevada, with rock climbing and hiking routes that make no reference to gambling. Hoover Dam is 45 minutes south-east. The Valley of Fire State Park – 90 minutes north-east, red sandstone formations in an alien landscape – is seen by almost no Las Vegas visitors and is significantly better than anything on the Strip as scenery.

Practical Notes

The July-August heat regularly hits 42 degrees Celsius. Walking the full Strip at midday in summer is the kind of decision that makes sense on a map and not in practice. The resort monorail connects several properties along the east side; Uber and Lyft work normally.

Set a gambling budget before you arrive and treat it as the entertainment expense it is. The casino floor is a product designed by some of the best engineers and psychologists in the world to extract money efficiently. You will have fun. You will lose.

24-hour wedding chapels with essentially no waiting period remain legal and operational. This remains, inexplicably, a fact about Nevada.