Saint Paul

Saint Paul is the quieter, more contemplative twin of the Twin Cities metropolitan area — and that is precisely its charm. While Minneapolis, across the Mississippi, projects corporate energy and lakefront modernism, Saint Paul preserves the stately Victorian character of a 19th-century river capital with an architectural integrity that few American cities can match. The Minnesota State Capitol, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece completed in 1905 with the largest unsupported marble dome in the world, crowns Cathedral Hill above a downtown of sandstone and brick that recalls the era when Saint Paul was the last outpost of Eastern civilisation before the Great Plains — a gateway city where steamboat passengers, fur traders, and homesteaders converged on the banks of the Mississippi.

Summit Avenue, stretching 7.5 kilometres from the cathedral to the Mississippi River bluffs, is the longest continuous stretch of Victorian residential architecture in the United States. The avenue's mansions — including the James J. Hill House, a 36,000-square-foot red sandstone behemoth built by the railroad magnate whose Great Northern Railway linked Saint Paul to the Pacific coast — document the wealth that flowed through the city during the Gilded Age. F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in Saint Paul and set much of his early work here; his observation that "in my next moment of free time I want to go up to the club and gaze at the green light at the end of Daisy's dock" was, in part, a Saint Paul sensibility transposed to Long Island.

The food culture of Saint Paul reflects the immigrant communities who built the city. The West 7th neighborhood's Irish and German heritage survives in pubs and breweries, while the Hmong community — the largest urban Hmong population outside Asia — has transformed the Hmong Village shopping center and the Saint Paul Farmers' Market into showcases for Southeast Asian cuisine: pho, papaya salad, sticky rice, and the egg rolls that Minnesotans have adopted as a regional snack. Mickey's Diner, an Art Deco streamliner car on West 7th Street, is a National Register landmark whose 24-hour menu of hash browns, meatloaf, and coffee represents the unvarnished Americana that more self-conscious cities have lost.

The Mississippi River, which flows through the heart of Saint Paul in a wide, tree-lined corridor, is the defining geographic and historical feature of the city. Harriet Island, a riverside park directly below downtown, provides the embarkation point for river cruises and hosts the annual Irish and German festivals that celebrate the city's European roots. The Science Museum of Minnesota, overlooking the river, and the Landmark Center — a Romanesque Revival federal courthouse converted into a cultural centre — anchor a downtown that rewards walking. The Minnesota History Center, one of the finest state historical museums in the country, documents the story of a region that stretches from Dakota Sioux sovereignty through French exploration and the lumber boom to the modern Twin Cities.

Saint Paul is served by Viking on Mississippi River itineraries, with vessels docking at Lambert's Landing below downtown. The most enjoyable visiting seasons are late spring (May through June), when the city emerges from its formidable winter with explosive enthusiasm, and early autumn (September through October), when the maple and oak foliage along the Mississippi corridor ignites in the vivid reds and golds that make the Upper Midwest's fall one of the most spectacular in North America.