# Mob Museum and True Crime Tours in Las Vegas Expose Sin City's Organised Crime Roots
In Las Vegas, Nevada, two dedicated true crime experiences — the Mob Museum and the Vegas Underworld Walking Tour — let visitors trace the real gangster history behind America's most famous gambling city, and both are open and operating today.
The Mob Museum: Where Federal Law Met Organised Crime
On 14 February 2012, the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement — universally known as the Mob Museum — opened its doors on the 83rd anniversary of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The date was not accidental. It was a deliberate signal that this institution takes its subject matter seriously.
The building itself is part of the story. The museum occupies a meticulously restored 1933 federal courthouse and post office in downtown Las Vegas. In the early 1950s, this same building hosted sessions of the Kefauver Committee hearings — televised congressional investigations into organised crime in America. Senators grilled mob figures on the very ground you now walk through as a paying visitor. The courtroom where some of those hearings took place is preserved inside.
The exhibits cover the full sweep of American organised crime history: the rise of the Cosa Nostra, Prohibition-era bootlegging, the FBI's long war against the Five Families, and crucially for Las Vegas visitors, the mob's foundational role in building the city itself. Bugsy Siegel's development of the Flamingo Casino — funded by organised crime money — transformed what was essentially open desert into the blueprint for the Las Vegas Strip. Without the mob, there may have been no Las Vegas as the world knows it.
Practical Information
The Mob Museum is open daily from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Note that holiday hours may be reduced — Christmas, for example, runs 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, so check ahead if you are visiting during a holiday period.
Admission is priced at US$34.95 for adults. A discounted rate applies for non-Nevada residents who visit before 11:00 AM or after 5:00 PM — a useful incentive to time your visit around the edges of the day when crowds are also typically lighter.
For groups of ten or more, 90-minute guided tours are available by calling 702.229.2713 directly. Plan for two to three hours if you are visiting independently and want to do the exhibits justice.
Advance reservations are recommended. Tickets and bookings are handled through [themobmuseum.org](https://www.themobmuseum.org/), though a box office is available on-site for walk-ins.
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Vegas Underworld: Las Vegas True Crime and Mob Walking Tour
For visitors who want to take the mob story out of a museum and onto the streets where it actually played out, the Vegas Underworld walking tour offers a two-and-a-half-hour guided experience through Las Vegas's true crime and organised crime history.
The tour is currently active and listed as likely to sell out, which reflects genuine demand. It focuses on the mob history and true crime legacy of Sin City — the same cast of characters and events that shaped Las Vegas from the Bugsy Siegel era onward, seen from street level rather than behind glass.
Tickets start from US$40, and booking is available through Viator or TripAdvisor, both of which offer free cancellation on this experience. If your Las Vegas schedule is flexible, the free cancellation policy makes it a low-risk addition to your itinerary.
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Why Las Vegas Is a True Crime Destination Worth Taking Seriously
Las Vegas is routinely dismissed as a city with no authentic history — a place of pure spectacle invented yesterday. The mob history tells a very different story. The casino economy, the hospitality infrastructure, the street geography of the Strip: all of it has roots in organised crime financing and political corruption that reached the highest levels of American government.
The Kefauver hearings held in what is now the Mob Museum were a pivotal moment in American legal history, the first time organised crime was systematically exposed to a television audience. The building that hosted them is still standing. The courtroom is still there. That is not a reconstruction — it is the actual room.
For true crime travellers, Las Vegas offers something rarer than a memorial plaque on a wall. It offers a city whose entire modern identity was shaped by the criminals and law enforcement figures who fought over it across the twentieth century. Both of these experiences are reliable starting points for understanding how that happened.
Book the Mob Museum at [themobmuseum.org](https://www.themobmuseum.org/). For the Vegas Underworld walking tour, search current availability on Viator or TripAdvisor.
