Caesar's Palace

Caesars Palace, is a luxury hotel and casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, an unincorporated township in Clark County, Nevada, United States in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Caesars Palace is owned and operated by Harrah's Entertainment. Caesars is located on the west side of the Strip, between the Bellagio and the Mirage.

Caesars has 3,348 rooms in five towers: Augustus, Centurion, Roman, Palace, and Forum. The Forum tower features guest suites with 1,000 square feet (93 m2) of space.

In 1962, Jay Sarno, a cabana motel owner, used $10 million that had been lent to him by the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund to begin plans for a hotel on land owned by Kirk Kerkorian. Sarno would later act as designer of the hotel he planned to construct.

Building of the 14-story Caesars Palace hotel began in 1962. That first tower would have 680 rooms on the 34 acre (138,000 m²) site.

Sarno struggled to decide on a name for the hotel. He finally decided to call it Caesars Palace because he thought that the name Caesar would evoke thoughts of royalty because of Roman general Julius Caesar. Sarno felt that guests should feel they were at a king's home while at his hotel. It is called "Caesars" and not "Caesar's" because every guest is a Caesar.

Sarno contracted many companies to build the hotel, from the Roman landscapes it presents, to the water fountains that have been stages of various events and the hotel's swimming pools.

The Caesars Palace Grand Prix car race (a Formula One World Championship event) was held at Caesars Palace in 1981 and 1982. After the Watkins Glen race course was removed from the schedule following the 1980 season, Formula One included an event in Las Vegas for the 1981 campaign. The new race was not popular among the drivers, primarily because of the desert heat. The track was laid out in the parking lot of the Caesars Palace hotel and was surprisingly well set up for a temporary circuit: wide enough for overtaking, it provided ample run-off areas filled with sand, and had a surface that was as smooth as glass. Its counter-clockwise direction, however, put a tremendous strain on the drivers' necks. When Nelson Piquet clinched his first World Championship by finishing fifth in 1981, it took him fifteen minutes to recover from heat exhaustion.

Over the years, the hotel has been owned by various companies, including Sheraton and The Hilton International Corporation. Caesars Entertainment (originally known as Park Place Entertainment) bought the property in 1999 before it merged with Harrah's in 2005. That year, Caesars Palace was affected by a large flood.

Caesars Palace is the flagship property of Harrah's Entertainment. The company has reported that they would like to change the name to Caesars Entertainment corporation. In 2007 the 8 properties in Las Vegas had total revenue of $3.6267 billion (54% from casino).

With the success of the Augustus Tower, Harrah's Entertainment was planning to expand by building a new hotel Octavius Tower (stalled) and sports complex. The sports complex will replace the events center. The project cost $1 billion and Harrah's planned to open it in summer 2009. In January 2009, Harrah's said it would postpone the opening of the new tower, citing a lack of demand for hotel space.