Las Vegas has appeared in over 130 films. This is not a coincidence. The city is built to be looked at — designed from the ground up around the assumption that its primary product is spectacle — and spectacle is exactly what film cameras are for. The result is that walking the Las Vegas Strip is an experience of layered cinematic recognition, where almost every major hotel has been the setting of something and the general atmosphere of the street suggests that someone, somewhere, is probably planning a heist.
This guide covers the Las Vegas hotels that have made the most significant contributions to cinema — from the Connery-era Bond that introduced the city to a global audience in 1971, through the Rat Pack nostalgia of the Ocean's remake, to the Caesars Palace roof scene that remains one of the great comic set pieces of the 2000s. All of the hotels are still there, with one significant exception. The exception matters.
✈️ Getting there
Casino 01The Bellagio — Ocean's Eleven (2001)
The Bellagio at 3600 South Las Vegas Boulevard is the primary location for Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven — the casino whose vault Danny Ocean and eleven associates plan to rob simultaneously while its owner watches a boxing match at the MGM Grand. The film's casino floor scenes were shot on the actual Bellagio casino floor, with set designers building a cashier's cage directly into the existing space. The producer had a long relationship with the Bellagio's owner and the production was given 24-hour access to the hotel, including the casino, the conservatory, the botanical gardens and the fine dining restaurant.
The Bellagio's fountains — the choreographed water display on the artificial lake in front of the hotel — close the film in a sequence where the eleven stand watching them after the heist, which is one of the more elegantly understated endings in mainstream Hollywood cinema. The fountains run every 15 to 30 minutes throughout the day and evening. Standing where Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Garcia and the others stood watching them is free, which makes it better value than most things in Las Vegas.
The Bellagio also appeared in Ocean's Thirteen (2007), the third film in the series, which adds a second layer of cinematic history to a hotel that was already operating in a register of considered luxury that most of the Strip has not attempted to match.
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Casino 02Caesars Palace — The Hangover (2009) and Rain Man (1988)
Caesars Palace at 3570 South Las Vegas Boulevard has appeared in more films than any other hotel on the Strip and has done so with a consistency of identity — Roman excess, imperial scale, the implication that whatever you are doing here, you are doing it to excess — that makes it cinematically irresistible. The lobby, pool, elevators, front drive and roof all appear in The Hangover, in which Phil, Stu and Alan wake up in a destroyed suite with no memory of the previous night and begin reconstructing events that include, but are not limited to, a tiger in the bathroom and a baby in the wardrobe.
The suite itself — Caesars' Forum Tower Emperors Suite — was the inspiration for the set built on a soundstage, rather than the actual room, though the real suite exists and can be booked by people who want to live adjacent to the film's premise without the tiger-related complications. The roof, where the four men stand at the opening of the film surveying Las Vegas, is the actual Caesars roof. The pool where they drink is the actual Caesars pool.
Rain Man preceded The Hangover by two decades — Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise's blackjack sequence was filmed in the Caesars casino in 1988, and the high-roller suite used in that film is known to this day as the Rain Man Suite, which is either touching or a very specific piece of hotel marketing depending on your relationship to sentimentality.
The Hangover tour: Caesars Palace runs informal self-guided Hangover location experiences. The pool, the lobby and the roof are all accessible to guests. You cannot book the actual room from the film but you can book rooms in the same tower. This is enough for most people.
Casino 03Circus Circus and The Riviera — Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Sean Connery's final official Bond film brought 007 to Las Vegas in 1971 and made the city — which was at the time considerably less glamorous and considerably more criminal than its current incarnation — one of the great Bond locations of the Connery era. The film used two Strip properties extensively: Circus Circus and the Riviera.
Circus Circus at 2880 Las Vegas Boulevard North is still open and still operating. The casino's owner at the time of filming was a Bond fan who gave the production full access and secured himself a small role as a scientist — the kind of arrangement that only happens in Las Vegas and that perfectly encapsulates the city's relationship with celebrity and entertainment. Bond's car chase through the streets of Las Vegas — weaving through traffic in a moon buggy before switching to a red Ford Mustang — is one of the film's most exhilarating sequences and one of the earlier examples of the city itself used as an action set piece.
The Riviera, which also appeared in Diamonds Are Forever and later in Casino (1995), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) and the 1960 original Ocean's Eleven with Frank Sinatra, is no longer there. It was demolished in 2015. The site now forms part of the Las Vegas Convention Center expansion. If you want to see what the Riviera looked like, Ocean's Eleven (1960) and The Hangover both have the exterior — The Hangover uses it briefly during a driving sequence — and Casino captures it at its 1970s peak in a way that is worth watching before any Las Vegas visit regardless of the demolition.
Casino 04The MGM Grand — Ocean's Eleven (2001)
The MGM Grand at 3799 Las Vegas Boulevard South appears in Ocean's Eleven as the venue where Bellagio owner Terry Benedict watches the boxing match while his vaults are being emptied across the street. The MGM Grand is one of the largest hotels in the world with over 6,000 rooms, its own arena and a casino floor the size of several football pitches. It is harder to get lost in than it appears from the exterior, which appears from the exterior to be completely impossible to navigate.
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Casino 05The Mirage — Vegas Vacation (1993)
The Mirage on the mid-Strip appeared extensively in Vegas Vacation (1993) — the fourth Vacation film with Chevy Chase — and benefited from the same producer-owner relationship that gave Ocean's Eleven its Bellagio access. The Mirage's casino floor, a Siegfried and Roy show and various resort areas appear in the film. The Mirage is still open but has undergone significant changes since 1993, including the end of the Siegfried and Roy residency following a 2003 incident that ended their career. The artificial volcano outside the hotel, which erupts on a schedule throughout the evening, continues to operate as one of the Strip's more reliable free attractions.
Your Las Vegas Film Locations Itinerary
- Bellagio — 3600 South Las Vegas Boulevard. Watch the fountains from the street. Best at dusk. Free.
- Caesars Palace — 3570 South Las Vegas Boulevard. Pool, lobby, roof. The Rain Man Suite is in the Forum Tower.
- Circus Circus — 2880 North Las Vegas Boulevard. Still open. Diamonds Are Forever (1971) car chase location.
- MGM Grand — 3799 South Las Vegas Boulevard. Where Benedict watches the boxing in Ocean's Eleven.
- The Riviera site — 2901 North Las Vegas Boulevard. Convention Center expansion now occupies this site. Pay respects if so moved.
- The Mirage — 3400 South Las Vegas Boulevard. Artificial volcano erupts every hour from dusk. Free.
- Fly into Harry Reid International Airport (formerly McCarran) — 10 minutes from the Strip. The most efficient arrival in American aviation.
Staying on the Strip
The most efficient approach to a Las Vegas film locations trip is to stay at one of the hotels you are there to visit. Caesars Palace and the Bellagio both offer a range of room types — the advertised rack rate is rarely what you pay, and midweek rates are significantly lower than weekend ones. The Strip functions essentially as a self-contained destination: once you are on it, the hotels, restaurants, shows and casinos are all walkable or connected by the monorail that runs along the eastern edge.
A serious Las Vegas film tourism itinerary covers the Strip from Circus Circus in the north to the MGM Grand in the south — about two miles — with the Bellagio and Caesars in the middle. This is a long walk in the Nevada heat. The free monorail within each hotel complex helps. So does air conditioning, which Las Vegas provides in quantities that suggest the city has made a collective decision not to acknowledge the temperature outside.
Everything that has ever been filmed in Las Vegas was filmed in Las Vegas because Las Vegas looks like nowhere else on earth. It is the only city specifically designed around the proposition that reality is optional. Every film that has used it has understood this. Standing in the Bellagio lobby or on the Caesars roof, the same thought occurs: this is exactly what it looked like on screen. It could not be anywhere else. That is either the city's greatest achievement or its most extraordinary limitation. Probably both.