St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota and the quieter, more historic half of the Twin Cities. While Minneapolis tends to draw attention with its arts scene and modern ambitions, St. Paul has older bones: grand 19th-century buildings, Summit Avenue's mansion row, and a downtown shaped more by the 1890s than by urban renewal.
The State Capitol, designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1905, is one of the finest in the country. Summit Avenue, running west from the Cathedral of Saint Paul, is the longest intact stretch of Victorian residential architecture in the US. James J. Hill — the railroad baron who built the Great Northern Railway — had the biggest house at the east end of the avenue.
Lowertown, the old warehouse district east of downtown, has revived as the city's arts quarter, with galleries, restaurants, and the Farmers Market clustered around Mears Park. The Landmark Center nearby hosted the trials of Prohibition-era gangsters who once used St. Paul as a safe haven. The Wabasha Street Caves, carved into the river bluffs, tell the same story from underground. F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up here, on the margins of the Summit Avenue wealth he would spend his career writing about; the Peanuts statues around Rice Park honour another local son, Charles Schulz.
The Mississippi River runs along the city's southern edge, and the bluffs above the river offer good walking and views. St. Paul and Minneapolis share an extensive light rail and bus network, making it easy to combine the two cities in a single visit.