Former Siegfried & Roy Home to Become Las Vegas Museum

Posted on: April 3, 2025, 11:08h. 

Last updated on: April 3, 2025, 11:32h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.
  • One of Siegfried & Roy’s two Las Vegas homes will soon become a museum
  • The “Jungle Palace” is located at 1639 Valley Drive

One of legendary Mirage headliners Siegfried & Roy’s two Las Vegas homes will be converted into a museum and entertainment venue. On Wednesday, the Clark County Commission unanimously approved a historic designation for the “Jungle Palace,” where Roy Horn lived with the magic duo’s tigers and lions at 1639 Valley Drive, as well as permits for its future public use.

The Las Vegas mansion where Roy, of Siegfried & Roy, raised his big cats, is about to become a museum and entertainment venue. (Image: Redfin)

The 0.42-acre property, the most famous private residence in Las Vegas, was purchased for $3 million in March 2023 by George Carden, patriarch of the family that founded the Carden International Circus, and his son, Brett Carden. According to Redfin, a private party purchased the estate in 2022 for $1.87M and flipped it for a tidy profit.

According to the county, the Cardens plan to run the museum and venue together.

It’s a Jungle in There

The Jungle Palace was built in 1954 as a Moroccan-themed compound featuring an 8,750 square-foot main house, three guest houses, a detached studio, and multiple water features, including three pools and a jacuzzi.

Siegfried & Roy added a bird sanctuary and numerous animal enclosures when they purchased the home in 1982, when they were still headlining at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino.

One of several animal enclosures on the Jungle Palace property’s 8 acres. (Image: Redfin)

While Siegfried Fischbacher was in charge of the illusions, Horn raised the animals at the Jungle Palace. According to a Vanity Fair profile, all of Siegfried & Roy’s cats slept in bed with him until reaching the age of 1. He also swam with his cats daily in the estate’s largest pool.

Fischbacher and Horn, posing with Mantra the tiger in the Jungle Palace library, met while working on a cruise ship in 1957. They first performed in Las Vegas 10 years later as featured in the “Folies Bergere” show at the Tropicana. They then appeared in a show at Bally’s before headlining for the first time at the Frontier. (Image: S&R Productions)

By 1990, the duo’s burgeoning popularity had earned them their own $30 million show in their own theater at the Mirage. Their 13-year run was one of the most lavish and successful in Las Vegas history.

Siegfried & Roy’s career came to a famously tragic end on stage on Oct. 3, 2003, when a handling error made by Horn — long covered up as a freak accident — provoked his favorite white tiger into mauling him nearly to death.

Mantacore crushed Horn’s windpipe and triggered a stroke that left him paralyzed on the left side of his body and unable to walk or talk without assistance.

Horn lived at the Jungle Palace until he died at age 75 from complications from COVID-19 in May 2020. Fischbacher — who lived a few miles away, on an 80-acre compound he called Little Bavaria — died less than a year after his partner of pancreatic cancer at age 81.

Unlike the Las Vegas homes of Wayne Newton and Liberace, Fischbacher and Horn’s homes were never opened to the public while they were alive.

“Absolutely not,” Siegfried pooh-poohed the idea to the Las Vegas Sun back in 2015. “This is our private — no, no, no. It’s our thing.”