Ann Arbor audiotours

Ann Arbor exists in a permanent productive tension between the University of Michigan campus and the surrounding city. The University of Michigan, founded in 1817 and established in Ann Arbor since 1837, shapes everything from the architecture on State Street to the pace of life on football Saturdays when 107,000 people fill Michigan Stadium, the largest stadium in the Western Hemisphere, and the city's population effectively doubles for an afternoon.

The streets between campus and downtown are where Ann Arbor is most itself: independent bookstores on Liberty Street, the Kerrytown market neighborhood with its farmers' market running since 1919, the Zingerman's Delicatessen empire that started as a single shop on Detroit Street in 1982 and became a national model for how to build a food culture from scratch.

The town's density of trees earned it the nickname Tree Town, and in summer the canopy over the residential neighborhoods turns the walks between blocks into something genuinely restful.