Longshanks is right - a wee slow elevator takes you up to the bells. Not recommended for the claustrophobic. You can walk if you wish; a tight, dusty, dim spiral staircase goes up to the chimes we well. But that's not as high as you can get: look at the full-size view, and find the tiny semi-circles at the peak of the tower. That's another floor, and they change the flag from those windows.

I've been up there. It was easier to get into East Germany in 1964 than to get into that space, but we did it - and to get down you have to walk backwards in the dark over a three-story void.

It's an amazing building. Just wish it wasn't puce.

That elegant tile roof was replaced not more than 5 decades later with some lame copper sheeting. When tiles cracked from the cold, they broke free and impaled pedstrians. Now you have to worry about giant icicles sliding off the copper all winter long.

And on another note, the "Father of the Waters" used to get all dragged out for Christmas. Frightfully so.

The tower has a 15-bell carillon, and noontime concerts are still played. The bells also chime at the quarter hours. I don't know what the tower was used for, but a trip to the bell loft is unnerving. A tiny elevator and rickety stairs gets you to a beautiful view.

With such a beautiful tower as the crowning touch of this structure, I am curious if it included bells, if not for melodies, at least to mark the time. It appears there is some type of mechanism in the tower, but I can't make it out. Could any past or present residents of Minneapolis let us know if the tower chimed, and if so, does it still chime today? I am interested to know what was housed in the tower structure and if it is still in use. I certainly wouldn't pass up an opportunity to go exploring in this building from basement to pinnacle.

Have you ever seen such pristine sidewalks?? Or a better tribute to the stonemason?

Even the horses and carriages out front seem to be precisely arranged. Not so the bicycles, but considering they had neither kickstands nor bike racks, but I can bring myself to overlook this.

The rowhouses look like highly flammable Monopoly tokens.

I'm pretty sure this building was seen last year (pretty creepily in winter twilight) in "The First 48," a true-crime show on A&E.

The statue in the rotunda is "Father of Waters," sculpted by Larkin Goldsmith Mead. Legend says that rubbing his toe brings good luck. The left big toe is worn smooth.

It embodies in stone the sacredness of democracy in the public mind at the time.

Love the beautiful frame houses in the neighborhood too - and it's charming to see the row houses.

The view from the tallest tower on City Hall, in the direction of this camera location (on the top of the Metropolitan Building) is https://www.shorpy.com/node/6973. The state courts outgrew this Richardsonian building by the 1970s and moved a block south, and the jail moved a block east in 2001, but it remains the center of city governance.

That's Hennepin county jail, it might still be there. The proper entrance to the building has a quaint statue of a god, Poseidon perhaps, reclining on a cot.

But boy has the neighborhood changed!