St. Paul's Ordway is elegant and Old World, conforming admirably to the high standards set by its older Rice Park neighbors: Landmark Center, the St. Paul Hotel and the St. Paul Public Library. The 1,900-seat main hall has wooden walls that make for outstanding acoustics and the 306-seat McKnight Theater provides an intimate venue for smaller shows. Three organizations call the Ordway home: the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera and the Schubert Club.

Opened in 1910 as the Shubert Theater, this comfortable classic structure was renamed in 1994 after St. Paul's most famous literary figure, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The man behind the restoration is the theater's most famous tenant, Garrison Keillor, host of the Minnesota Public Radio program "A Prairie Home Companion." It's now one of the Cities' nicest theaters, with admirable acoustics and three tiers of seating, plus opera boxes, all relatively close to the stage.

St. Paul puts its fanciest foot forward with this three-tiered, 18,600-seat hockey arena, home to the NHL's Minnesota Wild. Erected on the site of the '70s-era St. Paul Civic Center, Xcel's amenities fit its high-tech design and name: a 360-degree Surroundvision scoreboard, four 9-by-16-foot video screens, 30,000 pounds of speakers and dozens of swanky box suites with online access. Not just a temple for whooping hockey fans, the arena is attracting big-ticket touring musical acts.