By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2025-03-23 16:43:44 | Updated at 2025-04-05 05:31:18
1 week ago
A longstanding landmark on Las Vegas' world-famous strip is set to be pulled down this year.
The rotunda at Caesar's Palace - built in 1986 with a moving walkway used to ferry pedestrians off the strip into the hotel - has been out of use for the past decade.
The Rome-inspired building is currently the backdrop of many tourists pictures, located next to a driveway up to the sprawling hotel-casino.
The Clark County Building Department first issued a demolition permit valued at $157,500 in March 2023, records reveal.
Now it's time has finally run out.
'It will go away, probably sometime this year,' Caesars Entertainment Regional President Sean McBurney told the Las Vegas Review Journal.
Heidi Sarno Straus, daughter of Caesars Palace developer Jay Sarno, told the Journal that the rotunda is 'really meaningless' and 'not in the original plan.'
'It might have been used for storage. It was really just aesthetics. It's no loss,' she added.
The rotunda at Caesar's Palace will be demolished later this year according to hotel bosses
McBurney himself admits he has not been inside the rotunda for many years.
'As I recall, once you walk in, it's almost like a mini-Roman city inside,' he recalled.
'It's fascinating. But it's not used for anything at this point.'
Caesar's Palace had initially planned to get rid of the rotunda in 2023 ahead of the Grand Prix event held in the city in November of that year.
Its planned demolition is part of other losses for Sin City, including the closure of iconic hotel Mirage, which saw guests such as Michael Jackson.
The 3,044-room resort will reopen as Hard Rock Las Vegas in 2027.
Its tropical theme and volcano will be gone, and instead a 700-foot-tall tower in the shape of a guitar - similar to the one at the Florida hotel - will appear.
The Strip also saw the end of Tony award-winning musical Jersey Boys in the summer.
Caesar's Palace has been an iconic part of Las Vegas' strip since it opened in 1966
Sin City, has suffered other losses including the closure of iconic hotel Mirage
Whiskey Pete's, a 16-story castle-shaped resort in the desert town of Primm, opened in 1977
The musical, chronicling the 1960s rise of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, was meant to run for a year but was abruptly cancelled.
Further to this Whiskey Pete's in the desert town of Primm on the California-Nevada border shut its doors on December 17.
Affinity Interactive, the company that owns the hotel and casino, has since said the closure is temporary while renovations take place.
But locals and fans - pointing to the fate of another Affinity property - are concerned that Whiskey Pete's may never reopen.
The once popular town of Primm, just 40 miles from Las Vegas, has become something of a ghost town in recent years.
