Taking its cue from the foothills of northern Italy, the Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas is one of the pioneers that ushered in a new era in Las Vegas hotels, putting the focus on style rather than hypnotic flashing lights and cheesy motifs. This massive complex is pure class, featuring a bewildering array of amenities, both inside and out of the Italian-flavoured hotel.

But the Bellagio is not above the expected, whimsical showmanship that’s an innate component of the Vegas experience. Just take a look at its eight-acre Lake Como wannabe parked in front of the hotel. Everyone else does, especially when the hugely popular dancing fountains shift into gear every hour on the hour. In truth, the fountains really are quite cool and a preferable diversion to exploding volcanoes or men wearing togas.

With nearly 4,000 rooms on hand, it’s hard for the Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas to live up to its projected image as an Italian villa hideaway. The designers made the mistake of putting the casino smack in the centre of the hotel, ensuring that everyone must subject themselves to the ring-a-ding-ding of slot machines and crowds of gamblers to get anywhere in the hotel.

Apart from this imposed distraction, the Bellagio manages to create a luxury experience more akin to a Monaco casino than something in the heart of the Vegas Strip. Its exterior Italian courtyard boasts six lovely swimming pools that could have dropped off a Hollywood movie set, each with its own ambiance, and inside there’s an impressive atrium with botanical gardens.

Guests who book a standard room may be a bit disappointed with its petite size compared to such rooms at other top-end Strip hotels, and there seems to be an extra surcharge for everything you do, eat or use. But marble bathrooms with tubs ideal for long soaks help to make up for the lack of space in the standard rooms.

The Bellagio Las Vegas is widely regarded as having the best restaurants in town. Even the buffet is considered a masterpiece, its popularity evident by the permanent queue to get in. Celebrity chefs like Michael Mina and Jean-Philippe Patisserie ensure there are impressive menus to dine from, but few, if any, of the meals in Bellagio’s 14 restaurants come cheap.

As one would expect, there are hot nightclubs and bars here like The Bank and the Petrossian Bar, two favourites with the celebrity crowd. Another highlight is the surreal Cirque du Soleil show, O, which performs in its own special theatre nightly. Bellagio’s casino won’t disappoint either. It’s clean, well-apportioned and caters to a more dedicated set of punters.

People stop by the hotel just to shop at Via Bellagio, a glittering mall filled with luxury retailers like Tiffany, Gucci and Prada. Its top-of-the-line health and fitness centre is also well worth a visit to work off the holiday calories, even if it does cost handsomely to use.

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Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas