Fountains of Bellagio

Of the world's many large and impressive water features, few are as well known as The Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas. COD takes a closer look at what makes it an icon.History

Located in the famous Bellagio resort of Las Vegas, the Fountains of Bellagio is one of the world's best known water features.

Completed in October 1998, the 1,000-foot long fountain was built on request by Steve Wynn, chairman of Mirage Resorts, and designed and developed by US water feature specialist design company Wet Design.

The project was a huge undertaking for Wet Design, requiring extensive resources and taking three years to complete, but was also a big coup for the firm, clearly establishing it as a leading name in water feature design.

Collaborating with Wynn, the team at Wet Design produced extensive drawings, models and prototypes of the concept in order to perfect the design of the fountain.

Central to the design concept was achieving a sense of fluidity and flexibility, the designers said, enabling the fountain to best interact with the musical element and leading to its reputation as a ‘dancing fountain'.

The water feature opened on October 15, 1998, in a ceremony costing a reported US$88 million.

Why it's iconic

The Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas is one of the largest fountains in the world.

It is also one of the most innovative: the design for the fountain reportedly used more technologies than had been used for any other fountain before. The fountain has over 1,000 water expressions and more than 4,000 individually programmed white lights.

A number of new technologies were also created especially for the water feature including the Oarsmen, a technology designed to interact with the accompanying music display.

The design of the Fountains of Bellagio went onto inspire the creation of numerous other water features, and was a forerunner of the Dubai Fountain, currently under construction by Emaar Properties in Downtown Burj Dubai.