Caesars Palace, the resort in front of you, has no apostrophe in its name, and that was entirely intentional. This was intentional. Jay Sarno, the visionary hotelier who opened the property in August 1966, wanted every guest to feel that they were Caesar — not visiting Caesar's palace, but inhabiting their own imperial grandeur. It was a stroke of marketing genius that captured something true about what Las Vegas promised: the temporary suspension of your actual social standing.
Sarno designed the property with a Roman fantasy aesthetic so thorough it bordered on academic — marble floors, toga-clad cocktail waitresses, statues of emperors throughout the casino floor. He believed that environment shaped behavior, and that guests surrounded by imperial luxury would spend more freely. The evidence suggests he was right.
On New Year's Day 1968, motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel attempted to jump the decorative fountains at the casino entrance on his motorcycle. He crashed spectacularly, breaking 40 bones and spending 29 days in a coma. The footage was not broadcast on television for months, but when it finally aired, it turned Knievel into a legend. Caesars Palace was thereafter associated not just with Roman grandeur but with a particularly American form of spectacular, self-destructive ambition. Celine Dion later performed 717 concerts here. Both seem equally Roman, in their way.