Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
Venice on the Strip.
An introduction to the Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip, where Madame Tussauds stands beside the Campanile.
On this page
Read the Strip
The Venetian opened in 1999, on the site of the Sands. It recalls Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a Campanile of about 315 feet, a Rialto Bridge and a copy of the Doge’s Palace.
A city guide can give context without turning a place into a backdrop. Notice how the copies are scaled to the Strip, and how the canal brings water to a desert city.
Stone, brick and painted skies
Look at the patterned front of the Doge’s Palace copy, the red brick of the Campanile and, inside the Grand Canal Shoppes, the painted sky above the indoor canal.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was made and maintained. A photograph alone cannot tell you who built it, who painted it or the conditions in which they worked.
A Madame Tussauds chapter
Madame Tussauds Las Vegas opened in the same year as the Venetian, as the chain’s first museum in the United States.
Look at the meeting of the two: an old European craft of modelling in wax, and a resort that reimagines an old European city.
Make room for context
Pair this city reading with the museum’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places, commissions their restoration or represents their makers.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
