The world’s densest city ‘built by one man’ worth staggering £14.9bn

Think gambling and you probably think Las Vegas – and with good reason. The US city’s neon lights and dazzling casinos make it famous worldwide as a destination for anyone hoping to book a rendezvous with Lady Luck.

But the world’s real capital of sin – with a gambling industry worth a whopping seven times more than Vegas – lies more than 7,000 miles away, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Less than 100 years ago, Macau was a quiet Portuguese colony made up of two islands that were connected to mainland China by just a small land bridge.

Today, it is the most populated region on the planet, with 710,000 people squeezed into just 32.9 km2 of land.

The man who changed the face of Macau and would become known around the world as ‘The Godfather of Gambling’ arrived in the region in 1941, aged just 19, with little more than the clothes on his back. Fleeing the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, Stanley Ho quietly built up a small fortune trading kerosine and military supplies—and in 1962, gained exclusive gambling rights in the region.

This would prove to be a decisive moment for Mr Ho and Macau. He began building his impressive Casino Lisboa, which opened in 1970 as a retro-flavoured, neon-lit playground of sin.

Although gambling is illegal in China, it was legalised in Macau by the Portuguese Government in 1849, with a blind eye also turned to other, more adult-themed activities.

Suddenly reaping millions in gambling taxes, Macau’s economy boomed, with development increasing the region’s size from 11.6km2 to 32.9km2.

This was achieved using infilling, with large rocks dumped into the sea and filled with clay to create new portions of land.

Mr Ho enjoyed more than 30 years as the undisputed king of gambling in Macau until the region was handed back to China from Portugal in 1999.

In 2002, Mr Ho’s monopoly in the region was lifted three years later, and international gambling giants such as Wynn and Sands quickly moved in on the territory.

But Mr Ho wasn’t taking this lying down. In 2007, he unveiled his newest casino and hotel – the incredible $385 million Grand Lisboa. Dominating the skyline, it appears like a golden lotus flower literally blooming out of the ground.

But he faced stiff competition, with the ultra-modern $1.1 billion Morpheus Hotel opened by rivals Melco Resorts and Entertainment in 2018 arguably making the Grand Lisboa look humble by comparison.

Regardless, Mr Ho – who swore he never gambled himself – had forged his reputation as the Gambling King of Macau – and still found time to father 17 children with four different women,

Mr Ho died in 2020, aged 98, with an estimated net worth of $14.9 billion. But his legacy lives on in Macau’s prosperity, which in 2013 boasted an annual gambling revenue of $45 billion, helped in no small part by the 32 million visitors who flock to the region every year.

This is not the end of the story for Macau, with a New Urban Zone project set to create a further 7.3km2.