United States · Minnesota
Minneapolis
Big-city art, music and theatre wrapped around a chain of lakes you can swim in.
Minneapolis is the larger half of the Twin Cities, a Mississippi river town that grew rich milling wheat and spent the money on museums, theatres and one of the best park systems in the country. A chain of lakes runs straight through the middle of it, ringed by paths and public beaches and busy in every season, while the art and music scenes are far larger than the city's size would suggest. It is green, unpretentious and genuinely cold, and it makes no secret of any of that.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
English
Currency
USD
Timezone
UTC-5
Why you'll love Minneapolis
The lakes a chain of them sits inside the city limits, ringed by walking paths, separate bike lanes and public beaches, and the park system reaches so far into the residential streets that locals treat it as a shared back garden.
Culture an outsized arts scene for a city this size - a serious encyclopedic art museum, a contemporary institution with its own sculpture park, and more theatre seats per head than any American city outside New York.
Music the city that produced Prince, the Replacements and Husker Du still runs on small clubs, and the rooms where those records were made are working venues rather than plaques.
Food Scandinavian and German farm cooking layered under large Somali, Hmong and Mexican communities and a farm-state produce base, which is why the eating is much better than outsiders expect.
Best time to visit
Apr-May, Sep-Oct
14-23° days
44.977° N, 93.266° W
UTC-5 · America/Chicago
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Weather & when to go to Minneapolis
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-May, Sep-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Minneapolis
November through March is the long grey stretch, and January and February are severe enough to plan around - weeks on end below freezing, cold snaps far lower, and only a short window of usable daylight. Summer is warm and green but arrives with humidity, thunderstorms and mosquitoes once you step off the paved paths.
Top things to do in Minneapolis
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Chain of Lakes - swim, sail and cycle the city's water
nature wildlife scenic ⭐ Highly recommendedBde Maka Ska, Lake of the Isles, Cedar Lake and Lake Harriet sit in a row through the south-west of the city, joined by parkway, walking path and a separate bike lane, with swimming beaches, canoe and sailboat hire and a lakeside bandshell that runs a summer concert programme. In a hard winter the same lakes freeze solid enough for skating, ice fishing and a shanty village or two.
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Minneapolis Sculpture Garden - Spoonbridge and Cherry
culture arts scenic 👍 PopularThe garden beside the Walker Art Center is anchored by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's giant spoon-and-cherry fountain, easily the most photographed object in the state, with a glass conservatory alongside holding a Frank Gehry glass fish. A curving footbridge over the interstate links it to Loring Park and walks you straight back into downtown.
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Minneapolis Institute of Art - an encyclopedic collection, free to walk into
culture arts historyMia holds tens of thousands of objects across five thousand years, from one of the strongest Asian art collections in the country and a complete Chinese scholar's studio reassembled inside the building to Rembrandt's Lucretia and a van Gogh olive grove. General admission has never been charged, which makes it the obvious answer to a cold or wet afternoon.
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Stone Arch Bridge - the old rail crossing below St Anthony Falls
history scenicJames J. Hill threw this curving granite and limestone viaduct across the Mississippi in 1883 to carry his trains, and it now carries walkers and cyclists instead, putting the falls, the lock and the mill ruins in a single frame. It has been through long stretches of restoration work, so check whether the deck is open before you build a walk around it.
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Mill City Museum - built inside the burned-out Washburn A Mill
historyThe museum sits in the roofless limestone shell of what was once the largest flour mill in the world, with a freight-elevator ride up through preserved milling floors and an observation deck looking over the falls. It explains better than anywhere else why a city grew on this particular bend of the river.
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Minnehaha Falls - a waterfall in the middle of a city park
nature wildlife scenic 👍 PopularA fifty-odd foot drop into a limestone gorge in the south of the city, a few minutes' walk from the parkway, named in Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha by a poet who never set foot in Minnesota. The creek below runs on down to the Mississippi, and in a cold winter the whole falls freezes into a hollow column of ice you can walk behind.
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First Avenue - the black club with the silver stars
nightlife music culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedA 1930s Greyhound bus depot turned music venue, painted black and studded with silver stars naming the acts that have played it, from Prince and the Replacements to Husker Du and everyone since. Purple Rain was shot partly on this stage, and the small 7th St Entry room next door is still where local bands start out.
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Guthrie Theater - walk out onto the Endless Bridge
culture artsJean Nouvel's cobalt-blue block on the riverfront holds three stages and one of the oldest regional theatre companies in the country, founded in 1963 to prove serious repertory could live outside New York. You do not need a ticket to walk the Endless Bridge, the cantilevered lobby that hangs out over the mill district with a framed view straight up the river.
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Northeast Minneapolis Arts District - studios and taprooms in the warehouses
culture arts off beaten pathThe industrial blocks across the river from downtown carry one of the densest concentrations of artist studios in the country, with a single old seed warehouse holding hundreds of them, plus a run of taprooms in converted factory space. The neighbourhood keeps its Polish, Ukrainian and Italian parish churches and old-man bars alongside all of it.
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Midtown Global Market - eat across the whole city in one hall
foodA public market inside the vast old Sears catalogue building on Lake Street, with Somali, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Tibetan, Swedish and Ethiopian stalls trading side by side. It is the fastest way to understand how much immigration has reshaped south Minneapolis.
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Matt's Bar and the 5-8 Club - settle the Jucy Lucy argument
foodThe Minneapolis burger hides the cheese inside the patty so it comes out molten, and two plain south-side taverns have argued for decades over who invented it, down to whether it is spelled Jucy or Juicy. Both will burn the roof of your mouth, and the only honest way through is to eat one of each.
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American Swedish Institute - the Turnblad mansion
history culture artsA thirty-three-room chateau-style house built by the publisher of a Swedish-language newspaper, with carved kakelugnar tile stoves standing in almost every room, joined to a sharp modern wing and a Nordic cafe. Twin Cities immigrant history starts in this building.
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The Minneapolis Skyway - cross downtown without going outside
off beaten pathRoughly nine miles of enclosed second-floor bridges link most of the downtown core, the largest continuous system of its kind anywhere, and in January it is less a curiosity than the real street level. It empties out at night and at weekends, when downtown moves back down to the pavement.
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Theodore Wirth Park - ski and ride inside the city limits
nature wildlife adventureThe biggest of the city parks, on the north-west edge, with cross-country trails that get machine-made snow when the winter runs thin, mountain-bike singletrack for the rest of the year, and the oldest public wildflower garden in the country tucked into its woods.
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Mall of America - the indoor theme park in Bloomington
shopping 👍 PopularThe largest mall in the country wraps a full amusement park with roller coasters around its atrium, with an aquarium beneath the floor and hundreds of shops around it, and Minnesota levies no state sales tax on clothing. It sits at the end of the light rail line from downtown, on the site of the old Metropolitan Stadium, where one seat on a wall still marks a Harmon Killebrew home run.
Best areas to stay in Minneapolis
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Downtown and the Mill District
First-time visitors $$Skyways, stadiums and riverfront mill ruins
Explore hotels in Downtown and the Mill District →
North Loop
Food and drink $$$Converted warehouses, chef restaurants and boutiques
Explore hotels in North Loop →
Uptown and the lakes
Lakes and cafes $$Lakeside blocks, 1920s apartments, long bar strip
Explore hotels in Uptown and the lakes →
Northeast
Breweries and studios $$Old parish blocks turned arts and brewery district
Explore hotels in Northeast →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Minneapolis
Getting to & around Minneapolis
Getting there
Fly into MSP, then about 25 minutes into downtown on the light rail.
Flight
Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP)
Roughly 16 km south-east of downtown, sitting between the two cities. The METRO Blue Line light rail has a station under each of the two terminals and runs straight into downtown Minneapolis in about 25 minutes, or the other way to the Mall of America in a few. Taxis and rideshare take 15-25 minutes depending on traffic, and a free light rail shuttle connects the terminals to each other.
Train
Saint Paul Union Depot
The Empire Builder between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest calls at the restored Union Depot in downtown Saint Paul, which the Green Line light rail connects to downtown Minneapolis in around 45 minutes.
Coach
Downtown Minneapolis bus depot
Intercity coaches run in from Chicago, Milwaukee, Duluth and across the Dakotas, using the downtown depot on the north-west side of the centre; some services also stop near the university campus.
Drive
Chicago is a long day east on the interstate, Duluth and Lake Superior about two and a half hours north, and the Badlands and Black Hills a full day west. Winter driving here is a real skill, so think hard before taking a hire car out of the metro between December and March.
Getting around
Light rail
Two lines cross downtown: the Blue Line runs south to the airport and the Mall of America, the Green Line east to downtown Saint Paul through the university.
TBC
Bus
Metro Transit covers the metro area, with bus rapid transit lines on the busiest avenues that run more like a surface metro than a local bus.
TBC
Cycling
One of the strongest bike cities in the country: protected lanes downtown, the Midtown Greenway running east-west in an old rail trench, and the Grand Rounds loop linking the lakes to the river.
TBC
Walking and the skyways
Downtown is compact, and in winter the enclosed skyway network lets you cross most of it a floor above the street without ever going outside.
Free
Car
Not needed for the city, but useful for the outer suburbs and essential for the day trips. Parking is mostly in ramps and easy by big-city standards.
TBC
Rideshare and taxi
Both work across the metro and are the practical way home late, when bus frequencies drop off.
TBC
Day trips from Minneapolis
Saint Paul
Full dayTwin city capital
The older, quieter twin: a domed state capitol, a hilltop cathedral modelled on the great European ones, and Summit Avenue's long unbroken run of Victorian mansions, including the row house where F. Scott Fitzgerald finished his first novel. Add the science museum on the river bluff and a conservatory-and-zoo park, and it fills a day easily.
Getting there
train | car
About 20 min by car, or 45 min on the Green Line light rail
Stillwater
Half daySt Croix river town
A lumber-boom town on the St Croix where Minnesota's statehood movement began, with a main street of antique shops and bookstores under bluffs of lumber-baron mansions. The old vertical-lift bridge now carries walkers and cyclists on a loop trail across the river into Wisconsin.
Getting there
car
About 45 min by car east
Duluth and the North Shore
2 daysLake Superior coast
A working ore port where the aerial lift bridge goes up for lakers, and the gateway to a shoreline that behaves like an inland sea: waterfalls dropping straight off the escarpment, a lighthouse on a cliff above the water, and the Superior Hiking Trail running the ridgeline the whole way to Canada. Too far and too good to rush in a day.
Getting there
car
About 2 hr 30 min by car north-east
Taylors Falls and the St Croix dalles
Half dayRiver gorge and potholes
The river narrows into a basalt gorge here, with glacial potholes drilled metres deep into the rock on the Minnesota bank, including one of the deepest known anywhere. Canoe and kayak hire, short bluff walks, and climbing routes on the cliffs directly above the water.
Getting there
car
About 1 hr by car north-east
Red Wing and the Mississippi bluffs
Full dayBluff country river town
The town behind the pottery and the boots, sitting under Barn Bluff, which you can climb in under an hour for the whole valley. Carry on south on the Great River Road to Lake Pepin, the wide slack-water stretch of the Mississippi where waterskiing was invented in the 1920s.
Getting there
car
About 1 hr by car south-east
Paisley Park, Chanhassen
Half dayPrince's studio complex
The white complex in the western suburbs where Prince lived, recorded and rehearsed, now opened for guided tours through the studios, the soundstage and the archive of instruments and stage clothes. Tours are booked in advance and phones are locked away at the door.
Getting there
car | tour
About 40 min by car south-west
A little history of Minneapolis
The falls that made Minneapolis were sacred long before they were industrial. The Dakota knew the drop on the Mississippi as Owamniyomni and the river confluence just downstream as Bdote, a place of origin in their account of the world. The US Army built a fort at that confluence in the 1820s, and the falls - the only true waterfall on the whole length of the Mississippi - gave the settlement that grew above them the one thing the prairie could not supply, which was power.
Sawmills came first, then flour. By the 1880s Minneapolis was milling more wheat than anywhere on earth, pulling in Scandinavian and German farmers and workers by the tens of thousands, and the fortunes built on that grain paid for the parks, museums and theatres the city still lives off. Milling drifted away over the twentieth century and the city leaned on the companies it had spun out - cereal, retail, medical devices - while later arrivals, Hmong families after the Vietnam War and Somalis from the 1990s, made the Twin Cities home to the largest communities of both in the country. Minneapolis has also been a place where national arguments break open: labour in 1934, civil rights in 1948, and policing and race in 2020.
Father Louis Hennepin, taken up the Mississippi by Dakota captors, becomes the first European to describe the falls and names them for Saint Anthony.
The US Army begins the fort at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers that becomes Fort Snelling.
The town of Minneapolis is platted on the west bank, its name splicing the Dakota word for water onto the Greek for city.
Minneapolis absorbs St Anthony on the east bank and the two milling towns become one city.
The Washburn A Mill explodes in a flour-dust blast that kills eighteen workers and flattens much of the milling district.
Minneapolis passes every rival to become the largest flour-milling centre in the world, a position it holds for around fifty years.
The Stone Arch Bridge opens below the falls, carrying James J. Hill's railway across the Mississippi on granite and limestone arches.
A Teamsters strike shuts down trucking across the city and, after violent clashes in the market district, helps establish industrial unionism nationally.
Mayor Hubert Humphrey's civil rights speech at the Democratic convention splits the party and pushes it towards desegregation.
The Guthrie Theater opens, seeding the regional theatre movement across the United States.
The American Indian Movement is founded on the city's south side.
Purple Rain, filmed largely in Minneapolis, carries the city's music and its clubs to a global audience.
The Mall of America opens in Bloomington on the site of the demolished Metropolitan Stadium.
The interstate bridge over the Mississippi collapses in evening traffic, killing thirteen people.
George Floyd is murdered by a Minneapolis police officer at 38th and Chicago; the protests that follow spread worldwide and the intersection becomes a memorial site.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type A / B
120 V, 60 Hz
Dialing
+1
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
Mobile network & SIM card
Get an eSIM before you fly
A United States eSIM installs in minutes and works the moment you switch off flight mode. No SIM swap, no roaming bill.
FAQs about Minneapolis
▸ When is the best time to visit Minneapolis?
Late spring and early autumn. April and May, then September and October, give the most comfortable weather of the year, with the lakes open, the parks at their best and the city living outdoors. Summer is warm and green but humid, with thunderstorms and mosquitoes, and November through March is long, grey and cold. April can still throw a late snow, so pack for both.
▸ How many days do you need in Minneapolis?
Three to five. Two days cover downtown, the riverfront and the two big art museums; the third is what lets you do the lakes properly; a fourth or fifth gives Saint Paul or a river town a full day rather than a rushed morning.
▸ How cold does the winter really get?
Cold enough that it shapes the whole city. Minneapolis is among the coldest large cities in the country: temperatures sit below freezing for weeks at a stretch, cold snaps go far lower, and the lakes freeze hard enough to drive on. The place is well set up for it, with skyways, engine block heaters and winter festivals, but you need real boots and a real coat rather than a city jacket.
▸ Do you need a car in Minneapolis?
Not for the city itself. Two light rail lines and a dense bus network cover downtown, the university, Saint Paul and the airport, and the bike network is among the best anywhere in the country. A car earns its keep for the day trips - the St Croix valley, the bluff country, the North Shore - where transit does not reach.
▸ Is Minneapolis expensive?
It is one of the more affordable big American cities. Hotels and restaurants sit well below the coastal metros, the largest art museum asks nothing for general admission, and the lakes and parks cost nothing at all. Clothing carries no state sales tax, which is part of why the mall pulls shoppers in from several states away.
▸ Is Minneapolis safe?
For visitors, generally yes, with ordinary city sense. Car break-ins and property theft are the realistic risk, and the areas carrying most of the city's violent crime are on the North Side and along particular south-side stretches, away from where visitors spend their time. Downtown is busy by day and empties out once the offices close, so it is worth thinking about how you get back at night.
▸ Minneapolis or Saint Paul?
Minneapolis is the bigger, newer, louder half: the lakes, the music, the shopping and most of the restaurants. Saint Paul is the state capital and the older one, with Victorian mansions along one grand avenue, a hilltop cathedral and a more settled feel. Most visitors sleep in Minneapolis and give Saint Paul a day, which the light rail makes straightforward.
▸ What is Minneapolis known for?
Lakes and parks inside the city limits, flour milling that once fed much of the world, a music scene that produced Prince and a generation of guitar bands, more theatre seats per head than any American city outside New York, the skyway network, and the largest Somali and Hmong communities in the country.
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