From Bond to bust: a Sin City hotel’s closing mirrors the new face of Vegas

Tropicana, once host to celebrities, criminals and 007, will be replaced by the city's new focus of attraction, a sports stadium

Las Vegas's famous Tropicana hotel is no more. Its guests were abruptly asked to leave earlier this month and its gold-domed casino closed - signaling the end of an icon of classic Sin City life where glamor, celebrity and crime seemed to go hand in hand.

Now the old building will be elaborately demolished with explosives - a tradition of Nevada's desert gambling mecca - to make way for a sports stadium, symbolizing for many modern Vegas's image of sanitized mass tourism.