WISCONSIN STATE CAPITOL

The beautiful white granite rotunda in downtown Madison is not the original Capitol building. The first was built in 1838, when the Wisconsin legislature was still meeting in the small southwestern town of Belmont. It soon became too cramped and had to be demolished. The second building caught fire in 1904. The third and current Capitol was therefore built between 1906 and 1917, on the same model as the Capitol in Washington D.C., albeit a little smaller: a state could not be allowed to build the symbol of American power identically, so it was amputated by a few meters. The statue at the top, "Miss Forward", represents Wisconsin and its motto - "forward". In one hand, she holds a globe and an eagle, in the other a helmet topped by the state emblem, the badger. The Capitol was built with forty-three different types of stone, sourced from six countries and eight American states. The rotunda features marble from Italy, Greece, Algeria and France, red granite from Wisconsin, and even syenite (a type of granite) from Norway. The dome is one of the world's largest in terms of volume. The building houses the Governor's Conference Room, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, as well as the House of Representatives and the Senate. If you'd like to see the city from above, head for the fifth floor just below the dome. Numerous free guided tours of the building are also offered daily.