Minneapolis, MN

Minneapolis ground the nation's flour and then, quietly, became one of its great music cities. The falls of St. Anthony — the Mississippi's only true waterfall — powered the mills of Pillsbury and General Mills, and the milling fortunes endowed a cultural infrastructure out of scale with the prairie: the Minnesota Orchestra, founded in 1903, ranks among America's finest and plays in Orchestra Hall, whose blue-cube ceiling is an acoustic landmark; the Guthrie Theater set the model for American regional theatre; and the Walker Art Center with its cherry-and-spoon sculpture garden defined the contemporary museum.

Popular music crowned the city twice. Bob Dylan arrived from the Iron Range to play the coffeehouses of Dinkytown before New York claimed him — and Prince never left: the Minneapolis Sound was invented here, First Avenue's black-starred walls remain the city's sacred club since Purple Rain, and Paisley Park in the suburbs is preserved as he left it. Around the music lies the city of lakes — a chain of them inside the city limits, ringed by parkways where Minneapolitans swim, ski and skate according to season, refusing to concede anything to winter. Flour, funk and frozen lakes: Minneapolis is the north's confident answer to both coasts.