Minneapolis' skyline is spectacular. But is that from the north, south, east or west?

Have you ever caught a view of the Minneapolis skyline, and thought, what a beaut!

Every day, it's a sight to make the heart sing. At night, it's a glittering abstraction, with colors dancing at the top of the Target tower. But perhaps we like it because it's ours, and we are full of Minnesota pride. If we saw it anew with fresh eyes, might we still think it's grand?

What makes for a good skyline, anyway?

For starters, consider the design, density, variety and height. Each of these attributes is a variable element, assembled in different combinations from city to city. You can have a skyline dominated by one building with a design so good it seems as if the rest of the city is just a stage for its performance. Or you can have a dense skyline with lousy buildings that's still impressive for its bulk. Variety is nice, and the skyline could include an international-style skyscraper box, a 1970s glass tower and an old 1920s tower with lots of windows, which provide a human-scaled metric better than a blank glass wall. And height matters because it's testament to a city's commercial achievements.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, people judge the city by heights — it's seen as equivalent to prosperity," says Thomas Fisher, a professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Architecture.

Or, perhaps, its former prosperity. For instance, St. Paul's skyline does not give a boom-town impression and it's one of those rote midlevel Midwestern skylines that aren't perfect, featuring some good buildings and some regrettable boxes. St. Paul's tallest tower — the 37-story Wells Fargo Place on E. 7th Street — is a so-so structure whose saving grace is its angled roof.

But downtown St. Paul also has some fine tall buildings, including the big 1930s brutes of the Post Office and the First National Bank. The 17-story Travelers building helps the skyline with its pyramidal roof, and that's rare.

"There used to be more attention to the tops of the buildings," Fisher says. "Modern flat building tops are where you put the AC."

However, the real appeal of St. Paul's downtown isn't its office buildings, but the twin classical palaces of the Cathedral of St. Paul and the State Capitol, with church and state facing each other from their respective perches. But churches and government buildings rarely define a skyline.

Minneapolis' skyline is different, thanks to three tall towers — IDS, Wells Fargo and Capella. If the IDS Center is the best of the 1970s mirror-glass skyscrapers, then the Wells Fargo tower is a suave 1930s aristocrat, and Capella is an edgy iconoclast who decides to be round when everyone else is square. It's hard to imagine the skyline without this trio, but from the 1930s to the '70s, there was only the tapered Foshay Tower with 32 floors, the 19-storied Medical Arts Building, the shorter 16-story Northwestern Bank building and the Rand Tower with 26 floors.

When the IDS was built, its 57 stories immediately made everything else look puny and like the primates in "2001: A Space Odyssey," cowering in the presence of the mysterious monolith. In the end, that would be a building that defines the city's skyline, the maypole around which everything dances, the centerpiece of every vista. The IDS tower has become a timeless blue abstraction that mirrors our water, and our sky.

The Minneapolis skyline has different moods and appearances, depending on which highway you use to approach it. Here are the worst-to-best angles:

Least impressive

You're in a trough for most of the drive on Interstate 94 when approaching from St. Paul. But when you cross Interstate 35W you're suddenly lifted up to a new vista, and see the skyline with the great blue mothership of the U.S. Bank Stadium on the edge of town. The Capella Tower looks to be the most prominent building downtown, with the IDS Center standing off to the side like someone who doesn't feel like socializing. The view is OK, but underwhelming.

Decent

The Interstate 394 view provides an entirely different suite of buildings. IDS Center is prominent, but the impact of its great blue-faceted shaft is blunted by two smaller buildings that rise up like annoying moviegoers in the next row who block your view. The immense and boring nullity of the City Center tower dominates the left side of the skyline. The Foshay pokes its head up. Capella is nowhere to be seen. It's a nice view, but there are better ones.

Better

The approach heading north on I-35W is the most famous. It's the view that introduced Minneapolis to the world, since it appeared in the opening credits of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." It's a great introduction to downtown, but slightly misleading. The Two22 tower on 9th Street, originally known as the Piper Jaffray Tower, is an important part of the skyline, the equal of the IDS and the other taller towers. It's like someone who's invited to a fancy party and thinks he's as important as the host.

Best

This has to be the view from I-35W south, crossing the Mississippi River. When the city has a twilight glow, and the fading sunlight dapples the river, it's one of the best postcard moments you'll see. Unlike the I-35W north and I-394 eastbound views, which are apparent from far away, the view reveals itself all at once as you ride a curve, making you feel as if you passed through a veil to glimpse an unexpected and beautiful place. It's a rare skyline that can sneak up on you, but we have one.

Is this it, though? Will it ever change? Will IDS reign forever, or will we someday have a taller tower?

Maybe, says Kristy Dahlvang, CEO of Baker Associates, the firm founded by Ed Baker, father of the skyway system.

"What's going to drive everything downtown is land values. When COVID hit, everyone exited, and the land value in the suburbs became more valuable," Dahlvang says. "It doesn't make sense when you pencil it out to make a tall tower because the land value isn't there to grow vertically. Until those land values come back up, we're not going to see it. But I hope it happens."

In the end, though, a city's usefulness and livability is not defined by its skyline.

"In my field," says Fisher, "we're more focused on the street than what happens at the top. We're more concerned that the building make a good streetscape lively. You only see the top when you're far away."

True. But most of us aren't downtown all time, and behold the center city from our cars, driving from one suburban destination to the other. We're fortunate to have such a charismatic composition to behold as we drive. Just don't gawk too long. It's a beaut, yes, but eyes on the road.