The unlikely parallel between Rome’s eternal architecture and the Las Vegas Strip – Monocle

Today on the Strip, pavements swerve in and out of casinos and shopping malls as pedestrians are subjected to terrible music. It feels far from the dolce vita. But Baan, like Scott Brown and Venturi before him, has a point: the two cities have striking similarities. Both have Disney-esque streets, flip-flop-wearing tourists and Doric columns. In Rome, some of my favourite details are modern touches fashioned to appear as though they were hundreds of years old. Take the Bose speakers inside St Peter’s Cathedral, carefully painted to resemble marble.

Scott Brown and Venturi wanted readers to be open-minded, appreciating that while cities are often not the utopias that planners hope for, they are the places where we learn how people actually use urban spaces. The similarities between the remarkable in Rome and the ready-made in Vegas are a reminder of this. On my last night in Sin City, I looked up at Caesars Palace – a 130-metre-tall casino and hotel topped with a pantheon – and pondered whether this was exactly what the Romans would have devised, had they been asked to envision 21st-century architecture. They might also have ordered a margarita and headed to the blackjack table.

Source: The unlikely parallel between Rome’s eternal architecture and the Las Vegas Strip – Monocle