Las Vegas Skyline

Most American skylines grew out of a business district. The Las Vegas skyline grew out of a single boulevard, and almost every landmark on it is a quotation: a half-scale Eiffel Tower, a glass pyramid guarded by a sphinx, a fairy-tale castle with coloured turrets. No other city's silhouette is assembled from the rest of the world's, and that is exactly what makes it impossible to mistake for anywhere else.

The model keeps that collage intact. The Paris tower, the Luxor pyramid and sphinx, and the castle turrets sit at the front of the base where they read first, with the hotel towers rising behind them the way they do from the sidewalk on the Strip.

The STRAT, at 1,149 feet the tallest freestanding observation tower in the United States, finishes the left side of the composition with its needle and pod. On the right, the High Roller observation wheel — 550 feet tall when it opened in 2014, the largest in the world at the time — is the one round shape in a skyline of verticals, and its ring of cabins is printed spoke by spoke.

In front of everything stands the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, designed in 1959 and still the most photographed spot in the city. It's the detail people from Vegas point to first, so it sits forward on the base rather than buried in the towers.

Las Vegas is the most detailed skyline in the collection — wheel spokes, the tower's lattice, the pyramid's edges, the fountains along the front. It comes in two sizes, the Medium (7.5 in) and the Large (9 in). The Large is sized for a mantel or office shelf and ships free.