Montreal: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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Almost every French settlement in North America was founded for the fur trade. Montreal was not: on the seventeenth of May 1642 a group of about fifty Catholic devotees landed here with the explicit purpose of converting the Indigenous population, funded by a religious society in France, and they named it Ville-Marie. The money ran out, the mission failed, and the fur trade took the place over within a generation — but the street plan, the seminary and the hospital are all from that first intention. Start at Pointe-à-Callière, which is built on the exact spot.

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A short history of Montreal

In 1535 Jacques Cartier reached the Iroquoian village of Hochelaga, which stood on the island, and climbed the mountain that he called "Mount Royal". In 1642 French settlers founded Ville-Marie here, and from 1760 the British ruled the city. In 1768 the Shearith Israel congregation, the first Jewish congregation in Canada, was founded in Montreal, and in the 20th century the city was the largest Jewish centre in the country. In 1967 the city hosted the World's Fair, and in 1976 the Olympic Games.

The ten best sights in Montreal

1
Notre-Dame Basilica
1829, and the architect was an Irish Protestant who converted on his deathbed to be buried in it
2
Saint-Sulpice Seminary
1684 and the oldest building in Montreal; the clock on the facade has run since 1701
3
Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours
The sailors’ chapel; model ships hang from the ceiling, left by crews who survived the crossing
4
Pointe-à-Callière
Built over the actual founding site of 1642; you walk through the excavation under the building
5
Bank of Montreal, Place d’Armes
1847, and it is the head office of Canada’s oldest bank; the banking hall is open and free
6
Montréal City Hall
1878, and de Gaulle shouted Vive le Québec libre from the balcony in 1967 and caused a crisis
7
Château Ramezay
A 1705 governor’s house; Benjamin Franklin stayed in it in 1776 trying to recruit Quebec to the revolution
8
Bonsecours Market
1847, and it was the parliament of Canada for a short period after the real one was burned down
9
Place d’Youville
The parliament of Canada stood here until a mob burned it in April 1849; the site was dug up from 2017
10
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Founded 1860 and the oldest art museum in Canada; five pavilions and the permanent collection is cheap

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What is an audio walk?

Tours in Montreal →

A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Montreal:

Free walking tours in Montreal

A mission, not a trading post

Pointe-à-Callière · The museum is built over the founding site, and you go down into the excavation under the floor: the first Catholic cemetery, the foundations of the first customs house, and a collector sewer from 1832 that you walk along inside. The site also holds evidence of Indigenous presence going back about a thousand years before the French arrived, which the museum presents first.
Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours · Marguerite Bourgeoys, who came with the founding party in 1653 and ran the colony’s first school in a stable, built the first chapel here in 1675. The current building is 1771 and model ships hang from the ceiling — they were left by sailors who had survived an Atlantic crossing, as thanks. Bourgeoys was canonised in 1982, the first woman of Canada to be made a saint.
Saint-Sulpice Seminary · Built in 1684 and it is the oldest building in Montreal — and it is still a working seminary, which is why you cannot go in. The clock set into the facade was installed in 1701 and has been running ever since, which makes it one of the oldest public clocks in North America; the wooden mechanism was replaced but the face and hands are original.
Notre-Dame Basilica · James O’Donnell, an Irish-born Protestant architect working in New York, designed it and supervised the construction from 1824. He converted to Catholicism on his deathbed in 1830, specifically so that he could be buried inside the building, and he is the only person interred in the crypt. The interior is blue, gold and carved wood rather than stone, because the budget would not stretch to stone vaulting.
Place d’Armes and the Bank of Montreal · The bank across the square from the basilica was founded in 1817 and is the oldest bank in Canada; it issued the country’s first paper money and acted as the central bank until 1935. The 1847 building has a Pantheon front and the banking hall inside is open to anyone during business hours and free. The square itself was where the colony mustered for defence.
Place d’Youville · Montreal was the capital of the Province of Canada from 1844, and the parliament stood on this square. On the twenty-fifth of April 1849 a Tory mob, furious at a bill compensating losses from the 1837 rebellions, broke in during a sitting and burned the building down with the library of twenty-two thousand volumes inside it. The capital was moved out and never returned. The site was excavated from 2017 and part of it is now displayed.

The mountain that is not a volcano

Everyone in this city will tell you Mount Royal is an extinct volcano and it is not. It is an intrusion: magma that pushed up into the sedimentary rock about a hundred and twenty-five million years ago, cooled underground without ever reaching the surface, and was then exposed when the softer rock around it eroded away. There are nine of these hills in a line across southern Quebec and they are called the Monteregian hills, after this one. The park on top is Olmsted’s only Canadian work, and he was given half the budget he asked for.

The Olmsted road · Frederick Law Olmsted designed the park in 1876 and his central idea was the carriage road: a single switchback spiral that climbs the mountain at a gradient gentle enough for a horse to pull a carriage without stopping. He also argued against cutting a road straight to the summit, on the grounds that the climb was the point. The city had already stripped the mountain of trees for firewood before buying it, so most of what grows there was planted.
Kondiaronk Belvedere · The terrace is named after Kondiaronk, a Huron-Wendat chief who negotiated the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701 — a treaty between the French and about forty Indigenous nations that ended decades of war. He argued for it, won the argument, and died of illness in Montreal a few days before it was signed. The view from here takes in the whole plain and on a clear day the Adirondacks.
The Cross · Thirty-one metres of steel, put up in 1924 by a French-Canadian nationalist society to mark Maisonneuve’s wooden cross of 1643, which he planted after the colony survived a flood. It is lit every night, and the lighting has one special state: when a Pope dies, the city turns the cross purple until the funeral. The bulbs were replaced with LEDs in 2009.
Mount Royal Cemetery · There are two cemeteries side by side on the north slope with a wall between them — the Protestant one here and the Catholic one next door, which is the largest cemetery in Canada with about a million burials. The Protestant cemetery was laid out in 1852 as a landscaped garden and it is now the best bird-watching site in the city, with over a hundred and forty species recorded in it.
The tam-tams · Every Sunday from spring to autumn, several hundred people with drums gather at the Cartier monument on the east slope and play for about six hours. It has happened continuously since the late 1970s, it has no organiser, no permit and no schedule, and the city has twice tried to move it and failed. Around it there is a market, a medieval combat group in armour, and a lot of people lying on the grass.
Saint Joseph’s Oratory · The largest church in Canada, and it began with a doorkeeper. Brother André Bessette, a barely literate monk who worked as the porter of a college at the foot of the mountain, built a tin chapel here in 1904 with donations he collected from the people he claimed to have healed. Two million people visit each year, the dome is the third largest in the world, and there is a staircase of two hundred and eighty-three steps that pilgrims climb on their knees.

The Main and the Plateau

Boulevard Saint-Laurent is called the Main and it is the line that divides this city: street numbers east and west both start from it, and for a century it was where every immigrant group arrived — Jewish from the 1900s, then Portuguese, Greek, Italian, Hungarian and Chinese, each one moving a few blocks further north as the next arrived. The Plateau on either side of it is the densest residential district in Canada and almost all of it is three-storey walk-ups with the staircase on the outside, which is a Montreal peculiarity with a specific reason. Walk it on a Saturday.

Boulevard Saint-Laurent · The street was declared a National Historic Site in 1996, which is unusual for a street, and the citation is specifically about immigration: it was the corridor every community entered the city through. Between the 1900s and the 1950s this was the Jewish Main, with Yiddish theatres, twenty synagogues and the garment trade; the smoked meat and bagel shops are what is left of it, and they are still here while the community moved west.
The outside staircases · The Plateau’s spiral iron staircases on the outside of the buildings are there because of a by-law and a tax. Nineteenth-century regulations required a front garden set back from the street, and putting the stairs outside saved the interior space the landlord could rent; it also avoided heating a stairwell through a Montreal winter. The city banned exterior stairs in 1940 as a safety hazard and the ban was lifted in the 1980s when they were recognised as heritage.
Avenue du Mont-Royal · The Plateau is the most densely populated district in Canada and also the one with the highest proportion of residents who walk or cycle to work. The street is closed to cars for much of the summer and the shops are almost entirely independent, which is the result of a deliberate municipal policy restricting chain frontages. The borough also removed hundreds of parking spaces and has been fought about it continuously.
Parc La Fontaine · The park was a military firing range until 1888 and the two ponds are the old gravel pits, linked by a channel. Under the southern end there is something else: the city’s first hospital for infectious disease stood here, and the land was bought for the park partly to get rid of it. In winter the ponds freeze into a skating circuit that is maintained free and lit until ten at night.
Mile End and Saint-Viateur · Four blocks here hold a Greek church, a Portuguese one, a Hasidic community, the two rival bagel bakeries and a former textile factory that is now a video game studio. The bagel bakeries matter legally: when Montreal banned wood-burning appliances in 2009 over air quality, the two bagel ovens and the smoked meat smokers were specifically exempted after a public campaign, because the method requires the wood.
Jean-Talon Market and Little Italy · The market opened in 1933 on the site of a lacrosse pitch and it is one of the largest open-air markets in North America. In summer the stalls are growers from the Montérégie and Quebec’s own producers; in winter half of it closes and the covered half sells cheese, fish and Quebec cider. The Italian quarter around it dates from the 1910s and the espresso bars on Dante Street are cash only and have not been redecorated.

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Getting to Montreal and getting around

Montréal-Trudeau Airport · Fifteen kilometres west; the 747 bus runs all night for the price of a metro ticket
Gare Centrale · 1943, under the city; the trains to Quebec City and Toronto leave from below street level
Berri-UQAM · Three of the four metro lines cross here; the busiest station and the one to change at
Place-des-Arts · Every metro station here was designed by a different architect; this one has a stained glass wall
The RÉSO underground city · Thirty-three kilometres of connected tunnel under downtown; it exists because of February
Gare d’autocars · The intercity coach terminal above Berri-UQAM; Quebec City in three hours and New York in eight

Cheap eats in Montreal

Montreal has two food traditions running at once and they do not blend. One is Québécois and rural in origin — pork, maple, potato, things built to be eaten after physical work in a cold climate. The other is the immigrant Main: Jewish smoked meat and bagels from the 1900s, then Portuguese chicken, Greek, Italian, Hungarian and Vietnamese, each arriving on the same street. What they share is that the famous things here are all cheap counter food, usually from a shop that has not changed its sign in fifty years. Six to eighteen dollars, cards almost everywhere, and tipping is fifteen to eighteen per cent.

The Montreal bagel · Boiled in honey water, baked in a wood oven, smaller and sweeter than a New York one; a dollar each
Smoked meat · Brisket cured ten days and smoked, sliced by hand; a sandwich is about twelve dollars and ask for medium
Poutine · Chips, cheese curds and gravy; the curds must squeak, and it is not from Montreal
Portuguese chicken · Charcoal-grilled with piri-piri, by weight, from a counter with no tables; twenty dollars a bird
Jean-Talon Market · Growers in summer and a covered half in winter; the Quebec cheese counters are the thing to find
Maple everything in March · Quebec makes about three quarters of the world’s maple syrup; the season is three to six weeks in spring
Wilensky’s, Mile End · One sandwich, made one way since 1932, and they will not remove the mustard if you ask
Tourtière and pea soup · The Québécois winter dishes; a meat pie and a yellow split pea soup with salt pork
Chinatown dumplings · Four blocks only, and the Vietnamese and Cantonese counters both serve until late
Caffè on Dante Street · Cash-only espresso bars from the 1950s in Little Italy; two dollars standing at the counter

Museums in Montreal

Montreal’s museums divide cleanly: the ones about the city itself, which are unusually honest about the founding, the famine and the language question, and the ones that are simply world-class collections — the oldest art museum in Canada and an architecture research institute that is among the best anywhere. Two things to know practically: the Fine Arts permanent collection is cheap or free depending on your age, and Pointe-à-Callière is built over the actual founding site, so it is a building and an excavation at once.

Pointe-à-Callière · Built over the 1642 founding site; you descend into the excavation and walk an 1832 sewer
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts · Founded 1860 and the oldest art museum in Canada; five pavilions linked under the street
Canadian Centre for Architecture · A research institute first and a museum second; the 1874 Shaughnessy House is built into it
McCord Museum · Social history; the Notman studio archive of about 200,000 glass plates is the collection that matters
Montreal Holocaust Museum · Founded by survivors; Canada admitted almost no Jewish refugees before 1945 and the museum says so
Musée d’art contemporain · The first museum in Canada for contemporary art, 1964; under long renovation, so check first
Redpath Museum · 1882 and the oldest building in Canada built to be a museum; free, cluttered and barely changed
Château Dufresne · Two mirror-image houses behind one facade, 1918; two brothers, a shared wall and no connecting door

Holy places in Montreal

Mark Twain is supposed to have said in Montreal that you could not throw a brick without breaking a church window, and the number is real: there were once more than six hundred churches on this island. Quebec then had the fastest religious collapse in the Western world — Sunday mass attendance fell from about ninety per cent in 1960 to under five per cent today, in two generations — and the buildings are the physical record of both halves. Dozens have become libraries, climbing gyms, flats and concert halls, and the ones below are still working.

Notre-Dame Basilica · Its architect converted on his deathbed to be buried inside it, and he is the only burial there
Saint Joseph’s Oratory · The largest church in Canada, begun as a tin chapel by a college doorkeeper in 1904
Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours · Founded 1675 by Marguerite Bourgeoys, the first woman from Canada to be made a saint
The Black Rock · The grave of about 6,000 Irish typhus dead of 1847; the stone was raised by the bridge workers in 1859
Mary Queen of the World Cathedral · A quarter-scale copy of Saint Peter’s in Rome, built 1870 to 1894 in the Protestant end of town
Maison Saint-Gabriel · A 1698 farmhouse where the filles du roi were lodged before marriage; the roof frame is original
Erskine and American Church · An 1894 church bought by the art museum in 2008; twenty Tiffany windows, the largest set outside the US
Christ Church Cathedral · The Anglican cathedral sits on top of a shopping centre, because it sold the air rights to survive

Nature and day trips near Montreal

Montreal is an island at the meeting of two rivers, with a two-hundred-and-thirty-metre intrusion of hard rock in the middle of it, and everything green here follows from those two facts. The mountain was saved in 1876 and again in the 1960s when a motorway through it was stopped; the riverfront was industrial and is now a canal path; and two of the parks are islands, one of which was built from scratch out of rock dug from the metro tunnels. All of it is free and most of it is on the metro.

Mount Royal Park · Olmsted’s only Canadian work, 1876; it is an intrusion and not a volcano, which almost everyone gets wrong
Beaver Lake · Dug in 1938 on a drained marsh; skating in winter, pedal boats in summer, and free both ways
Parc Jean-Drapeau · Two islands; Île Notre-Dame was built from nothing with 15 million tonnes of metro excavation
Lachine Canal · Fourteen kilometres of flat cycle path; the canal was closed to shipping in 1970 and reopened for boats in 2002
Parc La Fontaine · A military firing range until 1888; the ponds are the old gravel pits and they freeze into a skating loop
Montreal Botanical Garden · Seventy-five hectares and thirty thematic gardens; the Chinese garden was built by Shanghai craftsmen
Westmount Summit Woods · The third Mount Royal summit, kept as bird sanctuary; the quietest green space in the city
Parc Maisonneuve and the Olympic park · A golf course until 1960; it adjoins the botanical garden and is cross-country skied in winter

Things to do in Montreal with kids

The useful thing about Montreal with children is that four of the best things for them are in one place: the Biodôme, the Insectarium, the Botanical Garden and the Planetarium are all within a few hundred metres of each other at the Olympic park, on the metro, and sold as a combined ticket. In winter the mountain has free skating and sledging. The one thing to plan for is January: minus twenty with wind is normal and children need more than a coat.

Biodôme · Four ecosystems inside the 1976 Olympic velodrome; penguins, a rainforest and the Saint Lawrence
Insectarium · Rebuilt in 2022 so that you move through the insects’ space; the butterfly room is the finish
Planétarium Rio Tinto Alcan · Two domes, one scientific and one an immersive art piece; combined ticket with the Biodôme
Montreal Science Centre · On a pier in the old port; hands-on, and the roof terrace over the river is free
Beaver Lake in winter · Free skating on the pond and a sledging hill beside it; skate hire at the pavilion
Parc Jean-Drapeau · A beach on the river, a water park and the Biosphère; one metro stop from downtown
Botanical Garden children’s garden · A working vegetable plot children plant and harvest in; the Chinese lantern festival is in September
Old Port Clock Tower · 192 steps, free, and there is a small artificial beach at the base of it in summer

Nightlife in Montreal

Montreal has the latest closing time of any large Canadian city — bars serve until three in the morning — and it is the one North American city where that produces something like a European night rather than a rush. The districts are distinct and you choose one: Saint-Laurent and Saint-Denis for bars, the Plateau for terraces, the Gay Village for a street closed to cars all summer, and the Quartier des Spectacles for the festivals, which between June and August close whole streets and are mostly free outdoors.

Quartier des Spectacles · Eight blocks with about forty venues; the jazz festival is the largest in the world and free outdoors
Boulevard Saint-Laurent · The bar spine; last call is three in the morning, the latest of any large Canadian city
Rue Saint-Denis · The French-language half of the night; terraces, student bars and a cinema showing subtitled films
The Gay Village · Sainte-Catherine east is pedestrianised every summer; one of the largest such districts in the world
Place des Arts · Six halls including the 2011 Maison symphonique, which was built because the orchestra had no home
Griffintown and Notre-Dame West · Where the serious restaurants moved; book, because the dining rooms are small on purpose

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Frequently asked questions about Montreal

What is there to see in Montreal?

The top sights in Montreal are Notre-Dame Basilica, Saint-Sulpice Seminary and Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Montreal?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Montreal without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Montreal?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Montreal, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: A mission, not a trading post.

How do you get to Montreal and get around?

The main ways are Montréal-Trudeau Airport, Gare Centrale and Berri-UQAM. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Montreal, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Montreal that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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