Minneapolis: urban lakes and public art

Built around a chain of glacial lakes within its own municipal boundaries, Minneapolis combines an outdoor lifestyle rare for a city its size with an art scene that has grown in the shadow of Prince's nearby, better-known musical legacy.

A rental bike remains the most practical way to connect the day's stops.

At the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, the iconic spoon with cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen dominates a free eleven-acre park adjacent to the Walker Art Center, a museum of contemporary art among the Midwest's most important.

The Minnehaha Falls, a sixteen-meter waterfall made famous by Longfellow's poem 'Song of Hiawatha', are reached through a wooded park along the Mississippi River, also convenient for a picnic.

The Chain of Lakes, a system of lakes connected by walking and cycling paths, allows you to rent canoes or simply walk along shores where in summer residents swim between daily commitments.

The Mill City Museum, housed in the remains of what was once the world's largest flour mill, tells with original machinery the story of Minneapolis as the world capital of flour production between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Oldenburg's spoon with cherry is probably the city's most widely shared image, yet Minneapolis's substance lies more in lakes that can be swum across at lunchtime.

Mill City Museum, among the rusted millstones of a vanished flour empire, reminds us that this orderly outdoor life grew on an industrial past far from light.