8/13 - Minnesota State Capitol

Touring the Minnesota State Capitol was an important item on our list of things to do. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, we didn't know the grand re-opening of the newly renovated building was taking place this weekend. Seeing news reports about it for the past few nights gave us an idea of the popularity of the event. We hoped both traffic and crowds would be at their low point on Sunday morning.

Minnesota State Capitol (with red events stage in front)

Capitol dome with the Quadriga (24kt-gold-leaf-covered horses)

The dome is 60 feet in diameter. It's one of the largest self-supporting marble domes in the world.

The $310,000,000 restoration project has taken five years to complete. The building originally took about nine years to build....started in 1896, opened in 1905. By 2012 it was crumbling from neglect and poorly conceived remodeling efforts through the 1970's. Barriers had to be erected around the building to prevent people from being hit by chunks of marble which were falling off.

Grand staircase leading to the Senate chambers

Rotunda ceiling

Rotunda floor from 3rd level

Ceiling of the House chambers

This is certainly one of the most beautiful State Capitols in the country and the greatest of the Beaux Arts period. The architect was Cass Gilbert who later designed the U.S. Supreme Court buildings.

LEGO model of the Capitol

This LEGO model of the Capitol was built by LEGO Ambassador Roy Cook who happens to be a philosophy professor at the Univ. of Minnesota. There are 75,000 bricks in this model which is 6' long, 4' wide and 3' high. It is absolutely perfect. 

Cathedral of St. Paul

Roy Cook also built a LEGO model of the cathedral which is on display inside. We drove around it but couldn't find a parking place so had to settle for just seeing the outside. 

Traffic going in and out of the city was definitely a lot lighter today. (We're staying about 18 miles south.) There were plenty of people at the Capitol but it was nothing compared to what we saw on the news the last two days, so going this morning was the right thing to do.

The rest of the day was taken up by lunch at a great little Thai restaurant and grocery shopping at....you guessed it....Walmart. We're really impressed with the whole Apple Valley area....neat and clean, traffic well managed (coordinated traffic lights, signage, etc.). Its population is around 50,000 so it's quite a bit smaller than Asheville, but being a suburb of the Twin Cities it runs into its neighbors so you can't tell where one ends and the next starts. It's all just part and parcel of the nearly-three-million-people metro area.

Tomorrow is our last one here. We're hoping the weather will cooperate.