Las Vegas Caesars Palace Casino

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Harrah's, now known as Caesars Entertainment, is the largest land casino group in the world and its flagship casino is Caesars Palace in the Las Vegas Strip. Today Caesars Palace is an imposing edifice with has 3,348 rooms in five towers, which are appropriately named Augustus, Centurion, Roman, Palace, and Forum. But Caesars Palace has had a checkered history which perhaps has more excitement and intrigue than the casino games it runs.

The construction of the hotel cum casino was started in 1962 by a cabana motel owner named Jay Sarno. Using a loan of $35 million, the hotel was sited on land owned by Kirk Kerkorian. Sarno himself designed the hotel. Sarno wanted his guests to feel that they were living as kings. He thought the name Caesars Palace would evoke the right mix of royalty and extravagance, particularly when it came to gambling. Therefore it had Roman landscaping an important part of which were the many water fountains. Caesars Palace was inaugurated in August 1966.

In 1969, Stuart and Clifford Perlman, the founders of the Lum's chain of restaurants, purchased Caesar's Palace. The first expansion of the facility was completed in 1974. In the early 1990s The Strip was modernizing. In 1992 the high end fashion shopping opened at Caesars Palace in the form of The Forum Shops. Another expansion took place in 2004, when only the second circular escalator in the United States was installed in Caesars. The Augustus Tower was inaugurated in August 2005. In 2005, Harrah's acquired the holding company Caesars Entertainment Inc. and thus became owner of Caesars Palace. Like all for all land casinos these are troubled times for Caesars Palace. In January 2009, the construction of the new Octavius Tower had to be stopped due to fall in demand.

The casinos at Caesars Palace are the main attraction. The casinos offer more than 129,000 square feet of gambling space that includes everything from high limit slots to casino table games and poker. The table games include blackjack, craps, roulette, baccarat, Spanish 21, mini-baccarat and pai gow poker. But casinos are only one of the activities of Caesars Palace. A wide range of sporting events have been conducted there. The parking lot was converted to a race track and the Formula One racing event termed The Caesars Palace Grand Prix was held there in 1981 and 1982. However the weather was not found conducive and the event was discontinued. Many boxing championship matches have been held at Caesars Palace. A galaxy of boxers has fought there including Sugar Ray Leonard, Larry Holmes, Muhammad Ali and Evander Holyfield. Similarly Caesars Palace has offered the best entertainment in Las Vegas. The names are legendary and include Celine Dion, Cher, Bette Midler, Elton John, George Burns, Diana Ross, Julio Iglesias, Judy Garland, David Copperfield, Gloria Estefan, Frank Sinatra and Mariah Carey. In fact, the Colossuem was specifically built for Dion's show A New Day.

However, over the years the most excitement has been generated by an event that involved jumping over a 141 feet high fountain on a motorcycle. On December 31, 1967, Evel Kneivel was the first to try it and he failed. Online casino players will recall that Kneivel has been immortalized by Vegas Technology in their online slot game Evel Kneivel. Another unsuccessful attempt was made by Gary Wells in 1980. The first success was achieved by Evel's son Robbie. In 1989 he made the jump that his father had failed to do. The feat was bettered in May 2006, when Mike Metzger became the first person to back flip on a motorcycle over the fountain.

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