Réservez vos billets théâtre, visites et attractions à Las Vegas

Few cities anywhere in the world have reinvented themselves as relentlessly as Las Vegas. What began as a railroad watering stop in the Mojave Desert became, across the twentieth century, a laboratory for spectacle, excess, and American reinvention. The Strip, that four-mile corridor of Nevada asphalt lined with resort towers and casino floors, is the version most visitors picture before they arrive. But the city that greets them is considerably more layered than the postcard suggests, and the range of things to do here has long since outgrown the slot machine and the buffet.

The geography shapes the experience in ways that are easy to underestimate. Las Vegas sits in a basin ringed by desert ranges, and the landscape beyond the city limits is genuinely dramatic. The Valley of Fire State Park, roughly an hour's drive north-east, takes its name from the red Aztec sandstone formations that glow almost incandescent at sunrise and sunset, and hiking there offers a complete counterpoint to the air-conditioned interiors of the resort corridor. In the other direction, the Grand Canyon's West Rim sits within reach for a day excursion, and an aerial approach by small aircraft, banking low over the Colorado River and the canyon walls, gives a sense of geological scale that no photograph quite prepares you for. Both options appear prominently among the 167 bookable experiences currently on offer in the city, reflecting how thoroughly the outdoor desert has become part of the Las Vegas proposition.