MICHIGAN

Mention MICHIGAN and most people think of cars, heavy industry and inner-city Detroit. Midwesterners prefer to focus on its magnificent scenery. The beaches, dunes and cliffs along the 3200-mile shoreline of its two vividly contrasting peninsulas – bordering four of the five Great Lakes – rival many an oceanfront state.

The mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula is dominated from its southeastern corner by the industrial giant of Detroit, surrounded by satellite cities heavily devoted to the automotive industry. In the west, the scenic 350-mile Lake Michigan shore drive passes through likeable little ports before reaching the stunning Sleeping Bear Dunes and resort towns such as Traverse City in the peninsula's balmy northwest corner.

The desolate, dramatic and thinly popu lated Upper Peninsula, reaching out from Wisconsin like a claw to separate lakes Superior and Michigan, is a far cry indeed from the cosmopolitan south. In the mid-seventeenth century, French explorers forged a successful trading relationship with the Chippewa, Ontario and other tribes. The British, who acquired control after 1763, were far more brutal. Governor Henry Hamilton, the "Hair Buyer of Detroit," advocated taking scalps rather than prisoners.

Ever since, Michigan's economy has developed in waves, the eighteenth-century fur, timber and copper booms culminating in the state establishing itself at the forefront of the nation's manufacturing capacity, thanks to its abundant raw materials, good transportation links, and the genius of innovators such as Henry Ford. Despite the slumps of the Seventies and Eighties, car production remains the major source of Michigan income – and tourism is now a four-season money-spinner.

South Michigan
Avenue Many of Chicago's major cultural attractions are gathered on the eastern edge of the Loop, along Michigan Avenue between the city's commercial core and the shores of Lake Michigan. On the lake side of South Michigan Avenue, at the east end of Adams Street, the Art Institute of Chicago (Mon–Fri 10.30am–4.30pm, Tues until 8pm, Sat 10am–5pm, Sun noon–5pm; $10 suggested donation, free Tues; www.artic.edu) has an excellent collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, Asian art (particularly Japanese prints), photography and architectural drawings.

The Neoclassical facade of the main entrance does its best to look dignified, but the numerous added-on wings can make it hard to find your way around inside. Most visitors head straight upstairs to the Impressionist works, which include a wall full of Monet's Haystacks captured in various lights, next to Seurat's immediately familiar pointillist Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte. A handful of Post-Impressionist masterpieces by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse are arrayed nearby. Beyond here, a tortured, tuxedoed self-portrait by Max Beckmann – his last Berlin painting before fleeing the Nazis – welcomes you into a crowded gallery of early twentieth-century American and European works, in which moody portraits by Balthus and Picasso, and Surrealist landscapes by Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy hang side by side with Edward Hopper's lonely Nighthawks and Georgia O'Keeffe's Black Cross, New Mexico.

Also look for the pitchfork-holding farmer of Grant Woods' oft-reproduced American Gothic – a picture he painted as a student at the Art Institute school, and sold to the museum for $300 in 1930 – and for the delightful seventh-century Indonesian-sculptured stone monkeys in the Southeast Asia collections displayed around the McKinlock Court Garden – in summer an open-air café. Also here, in the east end of the complex, is the immaculately reconstructed Art Moderne trading room of the Chicago Stock Exchange, designed by Louis Sullivan in 1893 and moved here in the 1970s. A few blocks north, the Chicago Cultural Center takes up most of the splendid old Public Library building at 78 E Washington St, and offers a range of free activities. As well as the city's main visitor center, it features various galleries (including some great photos of Chicago's most famous landmarks), major touring exhibits, and free lunchtime and evening recitals, readings and concerts (tel 312/346-3278 for details). The highlight is the Museum of Broadcast Communications, where you can watch old advertisements, newsreels and sporting moments (Mon–Sat 10am–4.30pm, Sun noon–5pm;).

In 1900 this lakefront strip around the Art Institute on South Michigan Avenue was the city's prime entertainment district. Many of that era's grand structures preserve a sense of its unabashed artistic aspirations. The world-renowned Chicago Symphony Orchestra, now run by Daniel Barenboim after many successful years under the baton of Sir Georg Solti, performs to sell-out crowds at the new Symphony Center at 220 S Michigan Ave (www.cso.org/). Down the street, the Fine Arts Building (www.fabgallery.com) at no. 410 once held the offices of Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum and the drafting studio of the young Frank Lloyd Wright. At no. 430, the stately 1889 Auditorium Theater was originally funded by a group of Chicago's civic leaders who were embarrassed by the derision of the more established Eastern cities.

They hoped this performance center, incorporating lavish use of gold, mosaics and murals, in addition to the acoustically perfect theater, would overcome the stigma. Yet farther south on Michigan stand two of Chicago's most famous old hotels, including the recently renovated Hilton, the world's largest hotel when it opened in 1927 – and the more affordable and atmospheric Blackstone. South of here, the neighborhood income levels drop off sharply. Apart from the Prairie Avenue Historic District, there's little of interest before the Hyde Park district three miles south. However, R&B fans may like to know that the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and 21st Street held the studios and offices of Chess Records, immortalized in the early Rolling Stones song 2120 S Michigan Avenue. Plans to turn this hallowed building into a museum and resource center for local musicians have so far failed to get beyond the argument stage.

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