The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories (45 page)

And somewhere beyond them all, down there in the desert, is an old sign that now stands more or less on its own by Route 91. In cheery, obsolete Perspex letters it says: welcome to las vegas.

When it was first placed there, Vegas had looked like Vegas, a strip
of flashing neon in the desert. It was Glitter Gulch. Now Vegas looks like everywhere else. It’s just like Venice, a city confected from the stolen images of others.

Q
IAN QICHEN LOOKS
at the palace his People’s Republic has stolen from its imperial past. He thinks of the portrait of Chairman Mao hung over the central entrance to the Forbidden City. Now the people stream in and out under Mao’s image through a portal that only the emperor was allowed to use, before history disposed of him.

Once upon a time, no one left the Middle Kingdom of the emperor, and his millions of subjects were unaware of the existence of other worlds. They did not believe Marco Polo when he told them stories about Venice. Perhaps they still wouldn’t. Unless, that is, someone rebuilt it in front of their very eyes.

Sheldon G. Adelson sees a smile flicker over the impassive face of Qian Qichen, and the potentate watches Adelson’s eyes widen as he sees it happen. It feels good being able to manipulate the thirdrichest man in the United States with a twitch. The construction of the Venetian in Las Vegas cost Adelson hundreds of millions of dollars; but he’s sure earned them back, as he might say. As he stands in front of the vice premier of China, his Sands Corporation boasts twenty-eight thousand employees. It has a stock value of around a hundred dollars a share, and there are some 355 million shares; Adelson controls at least two-thirds of them. Sheldon G. Adelson is the ruler of an extensive empire, whose heart is in the doge’s palace in the Venetian. His reach extends to Singapore, Israel, and Pennsylvania; and now he’s got his eye on the Cotai Peninsula.

“T
HE BUSINESS CASE
,” says the voice. Facts and figures flash over the screen; but good communist that he is, Qian Qichen gets the feeling that he might not have quite the same spin on them as the one Adelson would like him to.

The Venetian contains some fourteen thousand inhabitants, who live in three towers some thirty-five stories tall. Every morning they awake to the alarm call and fumble for the remote, switching on the
TV in the bathroom when they meant to open the curtains. They stumble down the corridors and wait for one of eighty elevators to arrive. The elevators are always crowded.

Downstairs they sip a coffee and watch the people go by on the Grand Canal, or they gorge themselves in the Grand Lux Café, or they eat a McBreakfast in the food court. If they have to work, they make their way to the convention center, where five vast floors of meeting space are designed to anticipate every one of their needs. If they don’t, they lie by one of ten swimming pools and watch Kevin Federline being thrown out of the Tao Beach Club, or they retire to an airconditioned cabana, where they watch it on TV.

If they are bored with the pool, they visit the casino, all 120,000 square feet of it. High rollers can retreat to private suites where cocktail waitresses have their favorite drink ready before they have even thought of asking for it. If they are bored with gambling, they shop at Barneys and Bottega Veneta, dawdling over handbags, shoes, and executive toys. If they are bored with shopping, they eat at one of eleven fine dining restaurants, or at one of the nine more casual establishments and two food courts nearby. All tastes are catered to by the extensive army of talented chefs overseen by Wolfgang Puck.

If the resort guests get bored with shopping and eating, there is always the theater—
The Phantom of the Opera
, or the Blue Man Group, or the Cirque du Soleil, or just some cabaret. Afterward, if they don’t head back to gambling, they go clubbing at Tao, to check out whether the sisters at the bar are Olsen or Hilton.

There used to be an art gallery at the Venetian, a branch of the Guggenheim. Designed by the prominent European architect Rem Koolhaas, it was a casket of treasures clad in corten steel. The first exhibition showcased masterpieces of impressionism. The second, curated by the enfant terrible Frank Gehry, addressed itself to the
Art of the Motorcycle
. The gallery is closed now. No one needs to look at art when they’re in Las Vegas.

The fourteen thousand citizens of the Venetian are looked after by about the same number of servants. Silent Mexicans push cleaning trollies up and down the carpeted corridors; punchy actors read the incomprehensible menus in the restaurants; inscrutable Eurasian
women deal cards and spin the wheels of fortune. They are the permanent inhabitants of the city, but their sole reason for existence is to service the temporary guests.

And while the citizens of the Venetian wallow in luxury, their every move is tracked by security cameras discreetly mounted into chandeliers and the belt buckles of frescoed goddesses. No sooner have they opened the minibar, or lifted a box of cookies from the tray, than infrared sensors have charged their credit cards. If they’ve maxed out their cards at the tables, they can’t even get back into the elevator to return to their rooms and pack.

Not that there’s any point in leaving. If they do, they find only more Venetians. Across the moats of freeway that surround the resort is another casino floor where beautiful Eurasian waitresses pollinate the gaming tables with brightly colored cocktails. Wolfgang Puck is running the high-end restaurants here too, and the Cirque du Soleil is once again performing in the theater. Every business need is met in the convention center, and there are air-conditioned cabanas by the pool.

None of the fourteen thousand citizens of the Venetian stay there for more than a few days. After their holiday, they fly home to Boston or Pittsburgh or Minneapolis, relieved to see the rainy sky. But even weeks later, as they window-shop in a spectacular new mall, or listen to Vivaldi while on hold with a customer service representative, they’re still in Vegas.

E
VEN IF THEY
go to Venice, moored like a cruise liner in an Adriatic lagoon. Some seventy-four thousand people arrive there every morning. If they have to work, they catch the early train or bus to avoid those who wander in later. If they don’t, they sit in a café and sip a coffee and nibble a croissant, watching the people go by.

When they have had enough of watching other tourists, the guests stroll the streets and shop. They dawdle over shoes and handbags, glittery masks and fauns of spun glass. They rummage through junk stalls, hoping to find some forgotten treasure of La Serenissima or the Carnival. When they are tired of shopping, they queue up to pay the entry fees for the galleries and the
scuole
and the churches:
the Guggenheim, the Accademia, the Frari, San Giovanni e Paolo, San Zaccaria. If the attraction is crowded, they are allowed ten minutes to look around, wandering through interiors piled with the relicts of a Serenissima that no longer exists.

When they are sated with art, they eat carpaccio and drink Bellinis in the innumerable restaurants that line the squares and the canals; and when they are finished with eating, they go to the Fenice to see an opera. They don’t go to the cinema: aside from the annual film festival, there isn’t one. They don’t go clubbing: there aren’t any clubs.

And then they fumble their way to bed. There are countless accommodations to choose from, ranging from the smart efficiency of the Danieli and the isolated luxury of the Cipriani to the rather more spartan arrangements of the youth hostel on the Giudecca. That’s in addition to the thousands of bed-and-breakfasts and furnished flats available for short-term rental.

The permanent residents of Venice are a tiny number compared to the 11 million that visit them every year. There were 150,000 of them in 1950, but by 2008 there were only 58,000. Twice as many people die as are born here. At this rate, the city will be completely empty of permanent inhabitants by the year 2034.

People can’t afford to stay: many of the flats have been turned into holiday rentals, and the prices of the ones that are left have skyrocketed. There’s a dwindling number of schools and precious little space for children. The residents depart in droves for the suburbs on the mainland, where houses are cheaper and there are actually things to do.

One might imagine that a place confronted by certain and imminent extinction might devise radical strategies for its survival. But the inhabitants of Venice envisage no such progressive future. Instead they address themselves to the restoration of churches whose congregations have long since withered away, and the refurbishment of palazzi whose families are long defunct. When they discuss affordable housing, the construction of new buildings is not even considered.

And why would it be? The city is booming, sustained by tourists who come in their millions to see the paintings of Canaletto in three dimensions. Every two years there is a Biennale, a showcase for all that is modern and innovative in architecture, design, and the arts. Yet this festival inhabits a place that hasn’t changed in centuries.

Early each morning, the former residents of Venice commute back to what was once their home. While their guests are sleeping, they walk to the districts and the houses where they were raised. They turn down the beds in their old bedrooms, set out the breakfasts in their old dining rooms, and polish the glasses in the bars in which they used to drink.

In April 2008, the last few permanent inhabitants staged a demonstration in the Piazza San Marco. They unfurled a banner upon which was written venice is not a hotel; but it is. After a few days their guests fly home to Paris, Edinburgh, or Munich. Perhaps they are relieved to see the rainy skies. Only later, as they wander around the old factory sensitively reconditioned as an arts space, or drink in the elegant bar that used to be a bank, or drive out to their weekend cottage in a village full of other weekend cottages, do they realize that they are still in Venice.