Information: Twin Cities

Minneapolis, the largest city in Minnesota, and St. Paul, its capital, are known as the Twin Cities, the state's major metropolitan area. They are rich in what makes cities exciting yet have few urban drawbacks. Here are negligible pollution, low crime rates, affordable housing, and people known for their friendliness. Minneapolis and St. Paul are growing centers of commerce and industry with major corporate headquarters in electronics, computers, food processing and milling, retailing, medicine, transportation, and forest products industries.

Some have characterized St. Paul as the more staid of the two; Minneapolis, the more lively. Suffice it to say that both are highly attractive cities, offering flourishing downtowns, sophisticated educational and cultural institutions, entertainment and sports, and the always affordable diversions of parks and open spaces.

The world's first indoor shopping mall, Southdale, opened in the suburban Twin Cities in 1956. In 1992, The Mall of America, the largest enclosed shopping mall in the United States (4.2 million square feet) opened in Bloomington. People from all over the world come to shop in its 350-plus stores. Diversions include a free Lego playground with a three-story Lego crane, 18­hole miniature golf, Knott's Camp Snoopy amusement park, a 14-screen movie theater complex and restaurants and nightclubs on the Upper East Side. Other shopping areas include four "dales" and many other shopping centers throughout the cities; complexes of small and large department stores, offices, and restaurants in the heart of both cities' downtown areas; and new and renewed developments along the Mississippi riverfront and in urban neighborhoods.

Cultural activities abound. The Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Eiji Que, is based in Minneapolis; its Orchestra Hall home also welcomes classical soloists and popular performers. The Grammy award-winning St. Paul Chamber Orchestra inaugurated its new home, the Ordway Music Theatre, in January 1985. The Ordway also houses the Minnesota Opera Company, which performs classic and modern works in English.

The Schubert Club brings world-famous soloists such as Janet Baker, Isaac Stern, and Richard Stolzman to the Twin Cities for its recital series. For new music enthusiasts, the Minnesota Composers Forum (established by University of Minnesota alumni) and the Walker Art Center offer concerts of recent works. The University's own School of Music has a busy schedule of student and faculty recitals, as well as lectures by visiting musicians. In popular music, numerous local clubs feature area groups, providing listening and dance music, in addition to the nationally known groups who come to play at the Target Center in Minneapolis, the St. Paul Civic Center, and open­air stadiums.

Northrop Auditorium on the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus features prominently in the Twin Cities dance scene through its Northrop Dance Series. The New York City Ballet, Twyla Tharp Dance, and Sankai Juku from Japan are only three of the major companies that have performed recently in the series.

Live drama has long thrived in the Twin Cities, which support seven professional theaters and numerous smaller ones. The choices include classics at the Guthrie Theater, American plays at the Cricket Theatre, experimental works at the Southern Theater, comedy and satire troupes around town, and suburban dinner theaters, too. The theater district near the University's Minneapolis campus alone boasts seven theaters, four of them on campus. During the summer the Minnesota Centennial Showboat presents melodrama in a sternwheel paddleboat converted to a theater and moored on the Mississippi below campus.

An active and enthusiastic writers' community gives readings of poetry and prose through the University, the Loft, and other organizations.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, a major Twin Cities museum, displays an encyclopedic collection of world art from antiquity to the present. The Walker Art Center, also in Minneapolis, highlights contemporary painting, sculpture, and prints. Exhibits at the Minnesota Museum of Art and the Science Museum of Minnesota with its omnitheater attract interest in St. Paul.

Moviegoers will find a world of foreign films (rarely shown commercially in the Twin Cities) at the University Film Society. It supplements the offerings of local movie theaters with an unusual variety of foreign and domestic films, featuring visits by renowned filmmakers such as Jean Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Krzysztof Zanussi and Robert Altman. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center also offer film series.

Major league sports fans can catch the action with the Twins (baseball), Timberwolves (basketball) and the Vikings (football), besides the University's Big Ten intercollegiate teams. The Twins and Vikings and the Gopher football team play in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, whose puff-sectioned roof emerged on the Minneapolis skyline in 1982.

Rich as these cultural, entertainment, and sporting possibilities are, sometimes the most refreshing activity is the simplest: enjoying the outdoors. Three great rivers-the Mississippi, the Minnesota, and the St. Croix-cross the eight-county metropolitan area. Within the Minneapolis city limits alone are five large lakes, with beaches, bike trails, walking paths, and parkways. In St. Paul, there's Como Park-zoo, conservatory, amusement park, lake, and picnic areas-all not far from the St. Paul campus. The Minnesota Zoological Garden, whose combination of open habitat and housed exhibits is similar in layout to that of the San Diego Zoo, is located on the southern edge of the metropolitan area.

Popular summer activities are swimming, canoeing, sailing, wind surfing, water-skiing, hiking, and bicycling.

Spring comes not a moment too soon, and fall colors around the lakes, the Mississippi River, and the treelined city streets are breathtaking. By December, Minnesota waters are frozen, and favorite pastimes switch to ice skating, cross-country and downhill skiing, showshoeing, ice fishing, and even winter camping.