Nearly a decade after his death in 2016, Prince continues to loom large as a cultural force in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In his beloved hometown, there are Prince-themed tours you can take, pilgrimage sites to pay homage to, and locals to envy for their anecdotes about surprise concerts and late-night jam sessions at Paisley Park, the star’s legendary studio/living space/performance venue/tiny purple suit repository.
An annual multiday gathering called Celebration still draws the faithful from around the world for 4 days of events in early June.
And in October 2025, a musical stage adaptation of the 1984 film Purple Rain, which starred Prince and featured his music on the unforgettable soundtrack, will premiere at the State Theatre in downtown Minneapolis. The show is expected to transfer eventually to Broadway.
The associations of some celebrities with their favorite cities can at times feel tenuous or overblown for tourism. But the Prince–Minneapolis connection was real and ran deep, with the artist maintaining residence and community ties in the region well after he had become successful enough to live anywhere. As Prince once explained it: “I like Hollywood. I just like Minneapolis a little bit better.”
Fans are certain to like the city, too—provided, of course, they’re not caught outside without a coat in January.
And so, dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this greatest-hits collection of Prince-related places in Minneapolis. Let’s go crazy.
Paisley Park
The quintessential Prince pilgrimage site is a 65,000-square-foot complex covered in white aluminum panels and located in the suburb of Chanhassen (about 20 miles west of downtown Minneapolis). Finished in 1987, Paisley Park was the artist’s creative home base and frequent crash pad, equipped with recording studios, chill-out spaces, and stages for intimate performances and late-night parties.
Per Prince’s wishes, the place was turned into a museum and opened to the public following his death, à la Graceland. To visit Paisley Park, you must book a timed tour in advance online. There are three tiers of tickets—all of them pricey—starting at $75 for the 90-minute standard walk-through and increasing to $110 for the 2-hour VIP tour and $199 for the 3-hour Ultimate Experience.
With any tour you choose, a knowledgeable guide will take your group through the building’s main floor, pointing out platinum records, the expected purple-forward interior design scheme, and eccentricities such as the resident pair of white doves housed in a luxe cage in the central atrium. Splurge for the VIP or Ultimate iteration and you’ll get access to more control rooms and the chance to see additional artifacts.
There’s an admirable effort at Paisley Park to keep the focus on the musician’s artistic output via displays of handwritten lyrics, numerous guitars and other instruments, and video clips of Prince rocking, tinkering, and discussing his craft.
But only a strict funkologist could resist the not-strictly-musical details onsite, such as the preserved lounging area where Prince preferred to watch TV. Or the room full of Purple Rain memorabilia, including a replica of the movie’s famous motorcycle, which you can straddle for a photo opp on the VIP tour. Or the soundstage ringed with costumes (the man did love a fitted jacket with a ruffled shirt) and a see-through, piano-shaped display case filled with high-heeled shoes. You learn that Prince liked ping-pong, The Big Bang Theory, and cheesecake, and you can buy a slice of his locally made favorite kind.
He was right about the cheesecake. Less so about The Big Bang Theory.
Childhood Sites
Of course, the story of Prince Rogers Nelson didn’t begin with Paisley Park. To trace the superstar’s early days in Minneapolis, you can follow the “Purple Path” by downloading the free map found at the city’s official tourism website, Minneapolis.org, or by scanning the QR codes found on sidewalk decals at certain downtown landmarks.
For more depth and context, download the excellent SoundAround Tours mobile app, which offers several different self-guided audio tours of Prince sites in Minneapolis. You can buy the tours individually or as a bundle ($19.99).
The whole enchilada covers 50 stops, but unless you’re a Prince completist, the Top Spots tour ($9.99) provides a good primer in 11 stops, incorporating audio descriptions, maps, archival photos, video and music clips, and links to other documents such as scans of Prince’s 5th grade yearbook in its entirety, should you feel compelled to scroll through that on your phone during the tour.
The text was researched and written by historian and SoundAround co-owner Kristen Zschomler—a Prince devotee, she told Frommer’s, from the moment she saw the “Little Red Corvette” video on MTV and thought, “Who is this marvelous creature?”
The route devised by Zschomler includes crucial addresses from Prince’s childhood, many of them in need of preservation. There’s not so much as a single plaque marking pivotal structures such as the now-deteriorating home where he lived from the ages of 6 to 12 (2620 8th Ave. N) or the currently closed Lincoln Junior High School (2131 N. 12th Ave.), which he attended during 6th grade.
While a student there, Prince (nicknamed “Skipper” at the time) appeared in local news footage—lost and then miraculously rediscovered by chance decades later—captured amid a teachers’ strike. You’ll be happy to know the 11-year-old future A-lister voiced support for the demonstrating educators.
In addition to supplying encyclopedic biographical detail, Zschomler acquaints listeners with useful local history, advocates for the preservation of neglected landmarks (“Why isn’t this the Prince Rogers Nelson School for the Arts?” she said to us of the shuttered school building), and gives proper due to the “Minneapolis Sound.”
Pioneered by Prince and peers such as André Cymone, Morris Day, the team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and other Black musicians and producers, that homegrown genre combines elements of funk, rock, R&B, and pop, usually involving lots of synthesizers and loud guitars.
Music Venues
The most iconic live music venue in Minneapolis would have to be First Avenue (701 N. 1st Ave.), a converted Greyhound bus depot where Prince became a regular performer in the 1980s. The club’s distinctive, curving black facade is adorned with scores of large, mostly silver stars bearing the names of acts that have played the main room and its smaller adjoining space, 7th Street Entry. There are also some stars on the wall for figures of local importance.
In the vicinity of Prince’s star—painted gold after his death—you’ll find Nirvana, R.E.M., Cypress Hill, and Emmylou Harris, attesting to the variety of performers booked here. Only one star on the wall is red: the one memorializing George Floyd, who was murdered about 4 miles south of here (38th St. and Chicago Ave.) in 2020.
First Avenue was a notable filming location for Purple Rain, particularly for concert scenes, including the footage of the title song. The movie’s backstage scenes, however, were shot at the much larger Orpheum Theatre (910 Hennepin Ave.).
While we’re on the subject, the house used as the exterior of where Prince’s character, the Kid, lived in the film is located at 3420 Snelling Ave. and is sometimes made available for overnight stays on Airbnb. Though redecorated in Princely fashion by the current owners, the interior was not used onscreen.
Two historic musical sites in the city’s cultural development played key roles in Prince’s early recording career. In 1979 he staged his first concert as a Warner Bros. artist at the 1927 Capri Theater (2027 W. Broadway Ave.), which is still a community arts center.
And Prince recorded demos for his first album, 1978’s For You, at the original Sound 80 Studios (2709 E. 25th St.), where many ‘70s classics were previously made, including most of Blood on the Tracks by fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan.
Now known as Orfield Laboratories, the facility is home to an “anechoic test chamber” verified by Guinness World Records as the “quietest place on Earth.” You can book a 90-minute tour of the studios by appointment, but it costs $200 per person, which seems exorbitant unless you’re a rock obsessive or an especially desperate silence seeker (the parent of toddlers, perhaps?).
For those looking to experience remnants of the Minneapolis Sound with their own ears, we recommend seeking out the places where live music is performed in the city. Glam Slam, the club Prince opened in 1989, is now a western-themed bar and grill called Cowboy Jack’s (126 N. 5th St.). But you can still catch shows there, including the occasional Prince tribute.
You might have better luck, however, at a spot like Bunker’s (761 N. Washington Ave.), particularly on Sunday nights, when the highly regarded jam band Dr. Mambo’s Combo plays. The group has been performing weekly here since 1987. Prince himself was known to sit in with the band now and then.
Murals and Other Tributes
As you explore the city, you’ll encounter idiosyncratic homages to Prince in various places, starting with the giant, cloud-covered ankle boot (a nod to the “Raspberry Beret” video) situated in the window of the Meet Minneapolis Visitor Center (505 Nicollet Ave.).
Not far away, the LaSalle Plaza office building (800 LaSalle Ave.) displays on its lower levels an open-ended exhibit called “Remembering the Purple One,” drawn from an extensive collection of records, concert posters, tour merchandise, and other keepsakes amassed over the years by superfan Rich Benson (the exhibit was curated with music historian Andrea Swensson).
Among the street art tributes are murals by artists Rock “Cyfi” Martinez in the Uptown neighborhood (26th St. and Hennepin Ave.; pictured at the top of this page), Jonas Never in the North Loop (424 N. Washington Ave.), and Heiro Veiga, who created a 100-foot-tall visual ode in front of a downtown parking garage (1st Ave. and 8th St.).
Another wall painting downtown, the Schmitt Music Mural (88 S. 10th St.), depicts a five-story piece of sheet music written by composer Maurice Ravel, not Prince. The location is of interest to fans of both, though. In Prince’s case, the mural, once attached to a now-vanished music store, was used as a backdrop for an arresting promotional photo taken by Robert Whitman when the singer was just 18 years old.
Even Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport has a Prince store (Terminal 1, past security) where you can shop for souvenirs such as clothing, CDs, and artwork while waiting for your flight.
The clerk on duty assured us the place is the coolest airport gift shop on Earth, and it’s hard to argue with that assessment. Makes your average Hudson News look like a real disappointment.
