🇺🇸 United States · East Coast
Atlantic City is the great entertainment and gambling capital of the East Coast, a seaside city that for more than a century has been a byword for fun on the shores of the Atlantic. Its heart is the Boardwalk, the oldest wooden seaside promenade in the United States, a long avenue over the sand flanked by hotels, casinos, shops, food places and attractions, where the air is at once nostalgic and boisterous in a way that makes it unique.
Known as 'The World's Playground' in its golden age, and as 'the Las Vegas of the East', Atlantic City pairs its enormous 24-hour casino-resorts with kilometers of sandy beach, shows, concerts and a long popular history. It is also the city whose streets inspired the squares on the Monopoly board, that classic of board games: Boardwalk, Park Place and company were born here. A city with ups and downs across its history, but always with an unmistakable identity.
This guide covers the essentials of Atlantic City with a practical, warm eye: how to enjoy the Boardwalk and the beach, which casinos and shows to see, where to eat, how to get there and get around, and how to combine it with the charming New Jersey coast. Festive, easy to reach from New York and Philadelphia, and open 24 hours, Atlantic City is an escape of sea, lights and fun a step away from the great metropolises of the Northeast.
Atlantic City was founded in 1854 on Absecon Island, a New Jersey barrier island, as a seaside resort conceived from the start for tourism, thanks to the arrival of the railroad that connected it to Philadelphia. Its position by the sea and its easy access quickly made it the favorite holiday destination of the working and middle classes of the northeastern United States. In 1870 the first stretch of the Boardwalk opened, the wooden walkway over the sand, originally devised to stop guests from tracking sand into the hotels; over time it became the city's symbol and the oldest of its kind in the country. In the early 20th century, Atlantic City lived its golden age as 'the world's playground': enormous hotels, ballrooms, the famous pageant that would give rise to the Miss America contest (1921) and a legendary festive atmosphere. It was also a focus of clandestine activity during Prohibition. Its streets inspired the Monopoly squares in the 1930s. After decades of boom, in the mid-20th century the city went into decline, hit by changing holiday habits and competition from other destinations. Salvation came in 1976, when New Jersey legalized gambling in Atlantic City: from 1978 the big casinos opened, reviving the economy and turning the city into 'the Las Vegas of the East'. It has had ups and downs since, with casino closures and fresh reinventions, but it remains a major entertainment destination. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The 'Garden State' between New York and Philadelphia: Lenape land, a Dutch and Swedish colony before it was English, a decisive crossroads of the Revolution, cradle of Edison's laboratory and home to the boardwalk and the casinos of Atlantic City.
Read the history of New Jersey →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
If you have ever played Monopoly and bought the coveted 'Boardwalk' square, you already know —without realizing it— the most famous street in Atlantic City. But before it was the priciest name on the board, before the neon casinos and Miss America, this place was barely a wind-swept stretch of sand on a New Jersey island. The story of how that sandbank became 'the world's playground', fell into ruin and was reborn as 'the Las Vegas of the East' is one of the most fascinating roller coasters in American tourism.
Unlike many American cities that grew spontaneously around a port, a mine or a factory, Atlantic City was planned from the start with a single purpose: to be a seaside resort. In the mid-19th century, the barrier island of Absecon, off the southern coast of New Jersey, was barely a thinly inhabited sandbank, known mostly for a few fishermen and for the lighthouse that warned ships of the danger of the coast.
The vision of turning that sandbank into a holiday destination came from a local doctor, Jonathan Pitney, and an engineer, Richard Osborne, who saw the potential of the sea air and the beach to draw the inhabitants of the nearby industrial cities. The key was transport: in 1854 the railroad linking Philadelphia with the island opened, and that same year the city was officially incorporated under the name Atlantic City. The train cut the journey from hours to little more than an hour, putting the sea within reach of the working and middle classes.
The bet paid off immediately. The city was laid out on a regular grid and filled quickly with hotels, boarding houses and guest houses to receive the holidaymakers arriving by train from Philadelphia and, later, from across the region. Atlantic City was thus born as one of the first great mass tourism destinations in the United States, a place designed for rest, sea bathing and fun.
One of Atlantic City's most enduring contributions to American culture was born of a very practical problem. As the city received more and more summer visitors, hotel owners and shopkeepers faced a constant nuisance: the beach sand that visitors dragged in on their feet and clothes, dirtying hotel lobbies, train carriages and stores. A way had to be found for people to walk beside the sea without covering everything in sand.
The solution came in 1870, when the first stretch of the Boardwalk was built: a raised walkway of wooden planks (hence the name, 'board' + 'walk') laid over the sand, parallel to the ocean. Initially it was a modest, removable structure, meant for the season, but its success was immediate and it was widened, reinforced and extended over the years until it became a permanent avenue several kilometers long.
Atlantic City's Boardwalk is considered the first plank promenade in the world and the oldest in the United States, and it served as a model for countless later resorts. It soon stopped being a mere path and became the social heart of the city: hotels, shops, halls, attractions and the famous piers reaching out into the sea flourished along its sides. Walking the Boardwalk became the activity par excellence, and the promenade was engraved forever in the city's identity.
The first decades of the 20th century were Atlantic City's golden age, when the city reached the peak of its fame and splendor. It was known as 'The World's Playground', and it drew millions of visitors every year in search of fun, sea and spectacle. The Boardwalk filled with gigantic, luxurious hotels, ballrooms, theaters, cinemas, restaurants and the enormous amusement piers reaching out into the ocean, such as the Steel Pier, where the great stars of the day performed.
It was an era of extravagant shows and curiosities: concerts, dances, exhibitions, competitions and outlandish acts that delighted the public. In 1921, in an effort to extend the tourist season beyond the summer, the city created a beauty contest that would end up becoming the celebrated Miss America pageant, associated with Atlantic City for decades. The city was a magnet for American popular entertainment.
During the years of Prohibition (1920-1933), when alcohol was banned across the country, Atlantic City became famous for its more permissive atmosphere and its tolerance of clandestine drinking and gambling, under the influence of powerful local political figures. That mix of glamour, entertainment and vice gave it a legendary aura. It was also in this period, in the 1930s, that the city's street names were immortalized on the Monopoly board, carrying the name of Atlantic City into homes all over the planet.
One of Atlantic City's most curious and lasting cultural legacies is its connection to Monopoly, one of the best-selling board games in history. When the most widespread version of the game was developed and popularized in the 1930s (by the company Parker Brothers, building on earlier versions), its creators chose to use the names of real streets and places in Atlantic City for the properties on the board.
So whole generations of players around the world learned, without realizing it, the geography of this New Jersey seaside city. The priciest and most coveted square on the board, Boardwalk, is precisely the city's famous seaside promenade; Park Place, Atlantic Avenue, Ventnor Avenue, Baltic Avenue, Mediterranean Avenue, Marvin Gardens (inspired by the Marven Gardens area) and the four railroad stations all correspond to real places in the Atlantic City region. The choice reflected the prestige the city had at that time as the holiday destination par excellence.
That link made Atlantic City a household name even for people who never visited it, and today it is a source of local pride and a curious tourist draw. Walking the streets that give the Monopoly squares their names is, especially for fans of the game, a fun way to connect global popular culture with the real city that inspired it.
After decades of splendor, from the middle of the 20th century Atlantic City entered a long and painful period of decline. Several factors combined to erode the appeal that had made it 'the world's playground'. The most important change was the transformation of American holiday habits: the spread of the automobile and of air travel allowed families to reach more distant and varied destinations, from Florida to the Caribbean, taking the limelight away from nearby resorts such as Atlantic City.
On top of that, the spread of air conditioning made it less necessary to flee the city heat for the coast, and new entertainment destinations, led by Las Vegas and its casinos, captured the public looking for fun and gambling. The great Boardwalk hotels, once full, began to empty, age and deteriorate. The city suffered population loss, economic decline, rising poverty and social problems, and many of its emblematic buildings were abandoned or demolished.
By the 1960s and 1970s, Atlantic City was a shadow of what it had been: a city living off the memories of its golden age, with a diminished Boardwalk and an economy in crisis. The contrast between the glamour of the past and the reality of the present was painful. The city urgently needed a new reason to exist, something to bring back the flow of visitors and revive its economy. That solution would come from a bold and controversial decision.
Atlantic City's rebirth came through a risky move: legalized gambling. In 1976, after a referendum, the state of New Jersey approved legalizing casinos exclusively in Atlantic City, making it the first jurisdiction in the United States outside Nevada to allow casino gambling. The idea was to use the casinos as an engine to revive the city's devastated economy and to fund its revitalization.
In 1978 the first casino opened, and in the following years the great casino-hotel complexes went up one after another, completely changing the skyline of the Boardwalk and the Marina District. Atlantic City became 'the Las Vegas of the East', a magnet for millions of visitors who came in search of gambling, shows, restaurants and nightlife, a short distance from the great cities of the Northeast such as New York and Philadelphia. For a couple of decades, the city recovered its economic pulse and was once again a first-rank entertainment destination.
The new casino era had its ups and downs too, however. From the 2000s, the spread of legalized gambling to neighboring states (Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut) stripped it of the exclusivity and the captive clientele it had enjoyed. The economic crisis of the late 2000s hit hard, and around 2014 several major casinos closed, leaving a difficult picture. Even so, Atlantic City has kept reinventing itself, with new reopenings, bets on tourism unconnected to gambling (the beach, shows, food, events) and online gaming. Today it combines its role as the gambling capital of the East Coast with the nostalgia of its historic Boardwalk, in a city that, as so often in its history, is constantly looking to remake itself.