The World's Best Casino Rooftop Bars to Try

Rooftop bars, as a category, ask a lot of you. There's the queue for a special lift, the rope guarded by a man who seems personally disappointed in your shoes, and eventually a lukewarm spritz that costs the same as lunch. I've been let down by enough of them, in enough cities, to have worked out a rule that's served me well ever since: never trust a rooftop with nothing underneath it. Casino rooftops pass the test. When there's a gaming floor paying the bills downstairs, the bar upstairs doesn't have to squeeze you, so the drinks are made properly, nobody hurries your table, and the view gets to be the point rather than the excuse.

I'll admit the whole production is still a commitment, though, and half the cocktail people I know have quietly decided it isn't worth the taxi. Their version of this evening happens at home now: the shaker covers the drinks, logging into a casino online covers the cards, and the sofa has never once judged anyone's shoes. As a Tuesday night, it's hard to argue with. But the real thing keeps one element the home version can't build, the ritual of ascent, cards first, then the lift, then the skyline waiting at the top, and four rooms do that better than anywhere else.

Legacy Club, Circa, Las Vegas

Sixty floors above downtown Las Vegas, at the top of the tallest building in that end of town, and themed around actual bars of gold in display cases. This should be naff. It is somehow not naff, which might be the most Vegas thing about it. The terrace looks down the length of Fremont Street towards the Strip, and the drinks list leans brown and serious: old whiskies, champagne if you're celebrating, and bartenders who'll build you a proper Sazerac without reaching for a laminated card. Go at dusk. The desert does the rest.

Amazónico, Café de Paris, Monte-Carlo

When Monaco rebuilt the Café de Paris in 2023, someone made the gloriously odd decision to put a jungle on its roof. So now there's a canopy of greenery and carved wood sitting directly above the Place du Casino, with the old opera house close enough to inspect its copper roof and supercars doing their slow ceremonial laps below. The cocktails run tropical and Latin, which shouldn't work against all that Belle Époque formality and absolutely does. The tourist board's listing for the Café de Paris undersells it, frankly. Most things about that square are best learned in person.

CÉ LA VI, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

Yes, the obvious one, fifty-seven floors up on the ship-shaped deck that every travel account on the internet has photographed. I'd normally dock points for that. But some clichés earn their status, and drinking something cold and citrussy while Singapore's entire financial district lines up across the water is one of them. Two warnings from experience: the famous infinity pool next door is for hotel guests only, so make peace with that before you arrive, and the humidity means your first drink disappears faster than you intend. Order the second when the first one's half done.

38 Lounge, Altira, Macau

My favourite of the four, and the one nobody puts first. It sits on the top floor of Altira over Taipa, looking back across the water at the full neon blaze of the Macau peninsula, and it's quiet. Low seating, unhurried service, a wine list that suggests someone actually drinks wine. Macau's gaming floors are the most intense in the world, all speed and conviction and baccarat played like it matters, and coming up here afterwards feels like stepping out of the weather. You keep the spectacle, at a distance, through glass, with a drink.

One last piece of advice, learned the expensive way: do the roof at the end of the night, never the start. Arrive with the evening's adrenaline still going and you'll drain your first cocktail before you've tasted it. The lift ride up, ears popping gently, the city arriving all at once through the glass, is the best free thing any casino offers. The drinks at the top are very much not free, but by then you'll have decided they're worth it.