The Bellagio Hotel has so much to offer the public as far as sights on the strip go.  The minute you walk through the front door your eyes are brought to the ceiling of the lobby with what one could say is a garden of poppies all made from glass. The world famous contemporary art glass blower Chihuly created this work of art for Steve Wynn. Word has it upon the completion of the glass art Steve Wynn was not satisfied with the amount of the glass elements Chihuly create for his ceiling so then ordered more to satisfy the look. When finished it now has over 2000 hand blown glass elements.

Steve Wynn wanted a spectacular lobby piece that would rival his aquarium at the Mirage Hotel and generate a lot of interest. The entire 70 by 30 foot ceiling was built at the Chiluly studio in Seattle and shipped in large wood crates.  I recall before the Bellagio opened walking through and seeing the entire floor of the Bellagio lobby filled with the crates waiting for the team to install and design the ceiling.  Each disk was thought out before being placed on the ceiling and after weeks  of work from the Dale Chiluly team, the entire ceiling weighed in at 40,000 lbs. Chihuly’s large-scale contemporary sculpture  was called FIORI DI COMO meaning flowers of Como a beautiful lakeside city in Italy. This signature sculpture is just a reminder of his fascination with abstracted flower forms when he created the lobby piece.

When the Bellagio opened in Las Vegas in 1998 it was rumored that the lobby ceiling piece cost over $1 million. Steve Wynn loved the thought that people would come just to see the Chiluly ceiling and the thought of all those glass elements individually hand blown and strategically placed with color and form in mind is truly a work of art from such a talented team. 

Steve Wynn succeeded in creating a lobby that far exceeded the Mirage and I often wonder if anything else he does will ever surpass the opulence, detail and taste that the Bellagio has to offer to the public.

When Bellagio opened it was the most expensive hotel ever built coming in at $1.6 billion .