The famed duo’s desert residence, which a handful of big cats also called home, was decked out with over-the-top glitzy details befitting Las Vegas’s top act
Animal tamer-magician duo Siegfried and Roy debuted in 1967.Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
“From the moment we met, I knew Roy and I, together, would change the world,” Siegfried Fischbacher said of the genesis of Siegfried and Roy, one of the biggest acts in Las Vegas history. That lifelong partnership was born aboard a cruise ship in 1959; Fischbacher was a steward and a part-time magician on the Bremen, while Roy Horn, an animal lover who would later smuggle a cheetah on board for a magic act, worked as a bellboy. With their combined talents, the performers had struck gold.
At the suggestion of a talent scout, the German magicians moved to Vegas in 1967. As their popularity grew, so too did their deep Sin City roots, and the partners eventually created for themselves two expansive estates: Little Bavaria, a 100-acre compound north of the city, and Jungle Palace, an estate a few miles off the Strip. While the former mostly served as a private escape, Fischbacher and Horn occasionally allowed cameras into their beloved Jungle Palace, posing with free-range tigers as if they were house cats. Read on to take a peek at the home of the iconic performers, who will be portrayed by Jude Law and Andrew Garfield in an upcoming Apple TV+ limited series, Wild Things, which began filming in Las Vegas earlier this year.
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
A new homeland
The duo permanently settled in Las Vegas in 1969, according to People. They lived in more temporary homes, such as the Spanish-style one seen in this 1975 snapshot, before scooping up their famed compounds, Little Bavaria and the Jungle Palace. Horn purchased the first parcel that would make up Little Bavaria in 1979, according to The Secret Life of Siegfried and Roy. “In a way we’ve transported as much of Germany as possible to Las Vegas,” the entertainer later wrote of the estate. “On 80 acres in the middle of the desert, we’ve built a Bavarian cottage and created a landscape that is a reminder of my Bavarian upbringing—lush green grass, thousands of trees, streams, and bridges and picturesque ponds filled with ducks, black swans, and King Ludwigs. We also have horses, goats, and chickens, and dozens of white peacocks roam the grassy meadows. Close the gates, and you’re in southern Germany. At home we still eat our hearty German cooking, and as much as possible we try to incorporate some of the customs of German homelife into ours.”
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Jungle Palace gates
Fischbacher and Horn pose at the gates of their Jungle Palace estate in Las Vegas in this August 1981 snapshot, the year after they bought the 8,750-square-foot main house at 1639 Valley Drive and the surrounding plots that made up the lush Moroccan-style compound.
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Sprawling out
Fischbacher and Horn pose outside the Jungle Palace with their cars and dogs in the same 1981 photo shoot. The following year they bought two neighboring parcels, and by the mid-’80s, the estate filled out the entire block, according to The Secret Life of Siegfried and Roy.
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Opulent furnishings
Here, the showmen sit alongside a gilded Buddha statue inside the residence. The home was densely decorated with ostentatious furniture, murals, statues, and water features—no surprise, considering their equally flamboyant stage presence. “A house doesn’t mean anything unless it’s a reflection of the people who live in it,” Horn once said, according to the biography The Secret Life of Siegfried and Roy.
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Domestic partners
Fischbacher and Horn pose with a trio of tigers and peacock-style chairs on the Jungle Palace patio in the early 1980s. The pair were romantically linked up until 1996, but didn’t come out publicly until 2007. “You don’t have to define everything, and I don’t want to disillusion people. Besides, I’m not a guy who kisses and tells,” Horn said in 1999.
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Michelangelo in Vegas
The partners show off a replica of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted inside their white stucco abode in 1983. Another prominent mural was found above the bed inside Fischbacher’s bedroom; it depicted the magician in the nude, accompanied by two cheetahs, and fighting an evil wizard.
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
A well-appointed estate
Horn and Fischbacher pose in front of the 1954-built main house of the Jungle Palace in 1983. The dwelling featured two bedrooms, four bathrooms, a library with custom stained glass windows, a powder room disguised as a Catholic confessional booth, and a hot tub in the dining room. Dotted with palm trees, the compound also hosted three guesthouses, a detached studio, three swimming pools, numerous fountains and waterfalls, a bird sanctuary, and multiple animal enclosures.
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Going for a dip
The magicians swim with a leopard at the Jungle Palace in this 1983 photo. Reportedly, Horn swam with his beloved feline friends every day. “You know, when you are here looking at them—so majestic—after a hard-working day.… Well, it just changes your life,” Fischbacher said of the big cats in a 1999 Vanity Fair interview.
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
A full house
The magicians cuddle some cubs alongside their assistant performer and personal manager, Lynette Chappell, at home in July 1983. She lived in one of the Jungle Palace’s adjacent plots. According to biographer Jimmy Lavery, the compound was also home to another onstage assistant, Toney Mitchell, as well as Horn’s mother, and later, his brother.
Photo: Peter Bischoff/Getty Images
Bringing magic to the Mirage
This 1990 snap shows the magicians and two of their white tigers near a tiled fountain that graced the Jungle Palace grounds. That year, the performers took their show to the newly completed Mirage hotel, which was built with a massive $30 million theater custom-designed for their act.
Photo: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Top of the heap
The show was a huge hit, making Fischbacher and Horn, pictured again at home in 1990, the highest-paid entertainers in Sin City history up to that point. A 1999 Vanity Fair feature reported that they earned an estimated $58 million in 1996 to 1997, or about $123 million in 2026 dollars. “You have to give up a lot of freedom,” Horn told the outlet. “Yes, it is lonely at the top, but my animals are such that when I get home at night to the Jungle Palace it is very peaceful surroundings. It gives me sanity.... After a show it feels like good sex, and I actually bask in the fan mails after I come home.”
Photo: Peter Bischoff/Getty Images
Esteemed guests
Fischbacher and Horn pose with German singer Heino in front of a bronze horse statue by Mexican artist Sergio Bustamante, faux tropical birds, and a golden palm tree at Jungle Palace in this 1995 photo. The performers also counted Elizabeth Taylor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Michael Jackson among their famous friends. The latter even wrote and recorded the theme song for the pair’s “Beyond Belief” show, entitled “Mind Is the Magic.”
Photo: Peter Bischoff/Getty Images
Fur babies
The duo shows off one of their signature white tigers during the same 1995 photo session. According to the 1999 interview with Vanity Fair, the felines slept in bed with Horn until they turned one year old. “Your love has to be bigger than love because they are like our children,” he told the outlet.
Peter Bischoff/Getty Images
Magical menagerie
The performers pose with three lions on a tiled platform at the Jungle Palace in this 2001 photo. Fischbacher and Horn’s animal kingdom also included pythons, alpacas, swans, horses, goats, a turkey, and other exotic animals. But big cats were always the favored pet; Horn even had speakers installed in their enclosures so that he could talk to them while he was on vacation.
Photo: Peter Bischoff/Getty Images
Inspiration from India
Horn walks with a lion on the lush grounds of the Jungle Palace in 2001. The property’s original architecture was Spanish in style, but Horn was inspired by Morocco and India when he elected to outfit the compound’s structures in white stucco and added domed rooftops to emulate the Taj Mahal, according to The Secret Life of Siegfried and Roy.
Photo: Peter Bischoff/Getty Images
Feline furnishings
The magicians pose with a lion in an area of the Jungle Palace in 2001. A pair of Chinese cloisonné lion statues, which were auctioned off for $9,562 in 2022, guarded the doors, while scalloped blue trim lined with white tassels decorated the top of the French door entrance.
Photo: Peter Bischoff/Getty Images
Lion’s den
Richly patterned rugs warmed the terra-cotta tiled floors of the pair’s abode, which was filled with pieces from around the globe. They aimed to make the space as ornate and over-the-top as their entertaining personas. “Our life is the stage, the stage is our life, and our home is a true expression of our personalities and a gathering place of travels and memories,” Fischbacher and Horn wrote in their 1992 autobiography.
Photo: Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images
Mirage apartment
Siegfried and Roy stand with a white lion in their Mirage apartment in the early 2000s. The two-bedroom dwelling, where Fischbacher and Horn would rest in between shows, was upstairs from their 1,500-seat theater at the hotel, overlooking the Strip.
Not long after this photo was taken, Horn suffered the infamous onstage tiger attack that ended their act in 2003, after four decades performing together. Horn, who was bitten in the neck, had to relearn how to walk and talk following the accident.
Photo: Denise Truscello/WireImage
Swan song
Fischbacher and Horn pose with six-week-old tiger cubs at Jungle Palace in this 2008 photo. The next year, they reunited with the stage to perform one final show, a benefit for the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas. Horn died in 2020 of complications from COVID-19, and Fischbacher died of cancer less than a year later. While Little Bavaria has been demolished to make way for apartments, the Jungle Palace received a historic designation in April 2025 and is slated to open as a museum and event venue.
Katie Schultz is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer who reports on celebrity real estate news and other pop culture-related content for AD. She has previously written for House Digest and the Minnesota Daily. Hailing from small town Minnesota, Katie has a degree in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of ... Read More
Princess Diana at Home: 25 Photos of the Icon From Childhood to Motherhood and Beyond
The People’s Princess spent plenty of time in the public eye—see how she lived her life out of the spotlight
Rita Hayworth at Home: 20 Photos of Golden Age Love Goddess’ Domestic Life
The star was Hollywood royalty before she became real-life royalty, with houses on both coasts as well as the French Riviera
11 of the Most Remote Homes in the World
From the “Loneliest House in the World,” to the smallest inhabited island, these homes in nature
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Chicago Buildings Tell the Story of the Architect’s Early Years
These are the visionary’s designs you should see in the Windy City, from his own residence to his only surviving public buildings
Discover Grand Central Terminal’s Dramatic History Told Through 9 Vintage Photos
Including how Jackie Kennedy stepped in to save the Beaux Arts masterpiece when it was nearly demolished int he 1970s
The Best Los Angeles Airbnbs, From Malibu to Mulholland
All the most stylish rentals to consider for your next sunny escape
50 Bookshelf Ideas That Turn Any Room Into a Bona Fide Library
Whether you’re working with a tiny nook or a wall-to-wall display, bookmark these ideas for your next renovation
The Best Airbnbs With Indoor Pools Are Never Crowded
Beat the heat and skip the community pool with these spacious, wellness-minded homes
These Small Desks Make a Big Impact
Keep your WFH station tidy with these multipurpose and portable pieces
18 Green Bathroom Ideas, From Soothing Sage Paint to Moody Moss-Toned Tile
Green is a popular powder room hue for it’s spa-like, tranquil quality—here, top designers share their very best tips for pulling off the look