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

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Vancouver was incorporated on the sixth of April 1886, and on the thirteenth of June — sixty-eight days later — the whole city burned down in somewhere between twenty-five and forty-five minutes. About a thousand wooden buildings went. Only the stone and brick ones survived, which is why the Gastown you walk through is all brick and all dated between 1886 and 1912: it is the rebuild, put up fast and in masonry, by people who had just watched the alternative. The route then goes into Chinatown, where the history is harder and mostly legal.

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A short history of Vancouver

For countless generations the area was the territory of Indigenous peoples such as the Musqueam and the Squamish. In 1867 a seaman named Jack Deighton opened a saloon near a sawmill, and the settlement of Gastown grew up around it. In 1886 the city was incorporated as Vancouver, after the British captain George Vancouver, and in the same year almost all of it burned down. In 1887 the first transcontinental train reached it, and the port became Canada's gateway to Asia. The city hosted the World's Fair in 1986 and the Winter Olympics in 2010.

The ten best sights in Vancouver

1
Gastown and Maple Tree Square
The city was incorporated on 6 April 1886 and burned to the ground sixty-eight days later
2
The Steam Clock
It looks Victorian and it was built in 1977, to stop people sitting on the steam vent
3
Sam Kee Building
Guinness lists it as the shallowest commercial building in the world: under two metres deep. Verified 10/2026
4
Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden
The first full-scale Ming scholar’s garden built outside China, 1986; no power tools and no nails
5
Chinatown Millennium Gate
2002, and it marks a quarter whose residents paid a head tax to enter Canada until 1923
6
Chinatown Memorial Monument
Two bronze figures, a railway worker and a soldier; the two ways Chinese Canadians earned the vote
7
Komagata Maru Memorial
In 1914 a ship of 376 Punjabi passengers was held in this harbour for two months and turned away
8
Powell Street, Japantown
About 22,000 Japanese Canadians were removed from the coast in 1942 and their property sold
9
Hogan’s Alley, Strathcona
The Black neighbourhood of the city, demolished in the late 1960s to build a viaduct
10
Museum of Anthropology, UBC
Arthur Erickson, 1976, designed on the post-and-beam principle of Northwest Coast houses

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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 Vancouver:

Free walking tours in Vancouver

Sixty-eight days

Maple Tree Square · This is where the city started, as a saloon. John Deighton arrived by canoe in 1867 with a barrel of whisky and offered the sawmill workers across the inlet all they could drink if they built him a bar; they put it up in about a day. He was nicknamed Gassy Jack for talking, the settlement became Gastown, and his statue stood on this square until protesters pulled it down in February 2022 — he had married a Squamish girl reported to have been twelve.
The Steam Clock · It looks like 1875 and it was built in 1977. Raymond Saunders designed it for a specific problem: there was a steam vent in the pavement here from the city’s downtown steam heating system, people sat on it in the rain, and the merchants wanted something there instead. It runs on that same steam, it whistles the Westminster chimes every quarter hour, and it is one of only a handful of working steam clocks in the world.
Sam Kee Building · Chang Toy, a Chinese merchant known to the English as Sam Kee, bought a standard lot on this corner in 1902. In 1912 the city expropriated most of it to widen Pender Street and refused his compensation claim, leaving him a strip less than two metres deep. So in 1913 he built on it: a two-storey commercial building with a basement that extends under the pavement, and Guinness records it as the shallowest commercial building in the world. It was built entirely out of spite and it is still rented out.
Shanghai Alley · The oldest lane in Chinatown, and in 1890 it was the densest part of the city: tenements, a five-hundred-seat Chinese theatre, and businesses in every basement. It was also the site of the 1907 anti-Asian riot, when a mob of several thousand marched through Chinatown and Japantown breaking windows. The theatre closed in the 1930s and the lane is now mostly a service alley with a bell from Guangzhou at one end.
Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden · Opened in 1986 and it is the first full-scale classical Ming scholar’s garden built outside China. Fifty-two artisans came from Suzhou with the materials, and they used no power tools, no screws and no nails — the whole thing is mortise and tenon. The pebbles in the courtyards were laid individually. The adjoining park is free; the garden proper is ticketed and the ticket is what pays the gardeners.
Chinatown Memorial Monument · Two bronze figures, a railway worker and a soldier, and together they are the argument. Chinese labourers built the hardest sections of the transcontinental railway in the 1880s and were then charged a head tax to enter the country, which rose to five hundred dollars by 1903; from 1923 to 1947 Chinese immigration was banned almost entirely. Chinese Canadians who served in the Second World War were among those who finally forced the repeal, and the vote came in 1947.

The park that was a village

Stanley Park is four hundred and five hectares of coastal rainforest inside a city, which is about ten per cent larger than Central Park and almost entirely unlandscaped — the trees are the remnant of what was here. It became a park because it was a federal military reserve that the city leased in 1888, and that is only half the story: there were Indigenous and mixed-race communities living on it at Xwayxway and Brockton Point, and they were removed, the last by court order in the 1920s and 1930s. The park’s own signs now say so, and the route below follows that.

Lumbermen’s Arch and Xwayxway · This clearing was Xwayxway, a Squamish village with a longhouse big enough for hundreds of people, and the midden of shells under it was metres deep — so deep that in 1888 the city dug it up and crushed the shells to surface the first road through the park. The residents were paid small sums or simply moved. There is a sign here now that says this, which there was not for a hundred years.
Brockton Point totem poles · This is the most visited tourist attraction in British Columbia and the poles are not from here: they were bought in the 1920s from Haida Gwaii, Alert Bay and the Nass River as decoration for a planned Indian village that was never built. The originals went to museums and what stands now are replicas carved by descendants of the original artists, which is the honest arrangement and is explained on the panels.
The Nine O’Clock Gun · A naval twelve-pounder cast in 1816 that has been fired at nine o’clock every night since 1894, and the original purpose was practical: it signalled the close of the legal fishing hours in the harbour. It is now a time signal and a nuisance by-law exemption. It has been stolen twice, once in 1969 by engineering students who held it for ransom.
The Seawall · The seawall round the park took sixty-three years to build, from 1917 to 1980, and one man worked on it for thirty-two of them: James Cunningham, a master stonemason who supervised it until he retired and then kept turning up to check the work. His ashes were scattered into the wall after he died in 1963, and there is a plaque near Siwash Rock. The whole waterfront path is now twenty-eight kilometres, the longest uninterrupted one in the world.
Siwash Rock · A volcanic sea stack about eighteen metres high with a Douglas fir growing out of the top, and it is the only one like it on this coast. In the Squamish account the rock is a man who was transformed as a reward for an act of purification before the birth of his child — the name in the language is Slhx̱i7lsh. The English name comes from a Chinook Jargon word that is now considered a slur, and the city has been asked to change it.
Prospect Point · The highest point in the park, and the view down on the Lions Gate Bridge shows you the other reason the park survives: the bridge was built privately in 1938 by the Guinness brewing family, who had bought thousands of hectares of West Vancouver and needed a way to reach it. The city agreed to let them run a road through Stanley Park in exchange, and the park plebiscite on it was close.

The freeway that was never built

Vancouver is the only major city in North America with no freeway through its centre, and that is not geography — it is a decision. In the late 1960s the plan was for an elevated motorway from the east through Chinatown and Strathcona and along the waterfront. It would have demolished both. A coalition of Chinatown residents, Strathcona homeowners and architects fought it through 1967 and 1968 and the council dropped it; one viaduct was built and stands there as the stub of the rest. Everything about how this city looks follows from that.

Strathcona · The oldest residential neighbourhood in Vancouver, and in 1967 the city had already demolished part of it for public housing and intended to clear the rest for the motorway. The residents — Chinese, Italian, Ukrainian and Black families — organised, got the federal minister to come and look, and the plan was reversed. The wooden houses here are from the 1890s and they survive because of that campaign.
Hogan’s Alley · This was the centre of Black Vancouver from about 1920: a lane of houses, chicken restaurants and a church, home to railway porters and their families because the sleeping-car jobs were among the only ones open to Black men. In 1967 the city expropriated and demolished it for the Georgia Viaduct, the one piece of the freeway that was built. The city formally apologised in 2022 and the viaducts are now scheduled to come down.
Science World and False Creek · All the water here was industrial until the 1970s — sawmills, a slaughterhouse and rail yards — and False Creek used to run two kilometres further east before it was filled in for the railway. The dome was built as the Expo centre for Expo 86, and the whole north shore of the creek was expo ground and was then sold in one transaction to a single developer, which is how Vancouver got its towers.
Yaletown · Named after Yale up the Fraser canyon, because the railway workers who had been based there were moved down here when the line reached the coast in 1887. The warehouses date from the 1890s and the loading docks are a metre above the pavement, which is why every restaurant terrace in this district is raised: the dock is the terrace, and that was the planning condition when it was converted in the 1990s.
Granville Island · Not an island and not natural: it was dredged into existence on a sandbar in 1915 for heavy industry, and by 1970 it was derelict. The federal government took it over and converted it from 1973 with one unusual rule — a cement plant was kept working on it, deliberately, so that the place would not become purely decorative. It still runs, and the trucks still use the same road as the market shoppers.
The Public Market · It is in a former machine shop and the lease has a clause that has shaped everything: no chain tenants and no franchises are permitted on the island. That is why there is no coffee chain and no bank branch here, in the middle of a city with plenty of both, and why the market stalls are run by the people standing at them. About ten million people come through a year.

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Getting to Vancouver and getting around

Vancouver International Airport · Twelve kilometres south; the Canada Line SkyTrain reaches downtown in twenty-six minutes
Waterfront Station · A 1914 railway terminus that now joins three SkyTrain lines, the SeaBus and the commuter rail
The SeaBus · A twelve-minute passenger ferry to North Vancouver on a normal transit fare; it runs every fifteen minutes
Pacific Central Station · The train to Jasper leaves twice a week and takes twenty hours; the bus to Seattle is four
Commercial-Broadway · The busiest station on the system, where two SkyTrain lines cross east of downtown
Canada Place · The cruise terminal under five white sails; the Alaska season runs from April to October
Lonsdale Quay · The North Vancouver end of the SeaBus; a market, and the buses to Grouse and Capilano leave from it

Cheap eats in Vancouver

Vancouver’s food is Pacific rather than Canadian, and the single most useful thing to know is that the best Chinese food in North America is not in the city — it is in Richmond, twenty minutes south on the SkyTrain, where more than half the population is of Chinese origin and the restaurants serve the regional cooking of Hong Kong, Guangdong, Shanghai and Sichuan to people who grew up on it. In the city itself the strengths are Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino and Persian. Ten to twenty-five dollars, cards everywhere, and tipping is eighteen per cent.

Richmond Chinese food · Three square kilometres of restaurants twenty minutes south; dim sum from ten, and book for dinner
Richmond Night Market · The largest night market in North America; May to October, Friday to Sunday, and cash is faster
Japadog · A hot dog with seaweed, bonito flakes and daikon, from a cart that started on this street in 2005
Phnom Penh · A Cambodian-Vietnamese room in Chinatown since 1985; the chicken wings are the reason for the queue
Granville Island Public Market · No chains are permitted on the island by the terms of the lease, which is why it is all producers
Spot prawns in May · A six-to-eight-week season; you buy them live off the boats at Steveston dock and they are expensive
Sushi density · More sushi restaurants per head than any city outside Japan; the cheap ones are genuinely good
Commercial Drive coffee · The Italian espresso bars here were the first in Canada to import a proper machine, in the 1950s
Punjabi Market · Six blocks on Main Street south; sweets by weight, and the quarter is much smaller than it was
Save On Meats · A Hastings Street butcher and diner that sells sandwich tokens you can hand to someone on the street

Museums in Vancouver

The museums here are strongest on two things the rest of Canada is weaker on: Northwest Coast Indigenous art, which is held and increasingly repatriated by the Museum of Anthropology, and natural history, because the coast is a working research subject on the university’s doorstep. The Vancouver Art Gallery holds the largest collection of Emily Carr anywhere. Several are on the university campus at the far west end of the city, which is forty minutes by bus and worth a half day.

Museum of Anthropology · Arthur Erickson, 1976; built on the post-and-beam logic of the houses whose art it holds
Bill Reid Gallery · The only public gallery in Canada devoted to one Indigenous artist; small, central and cheap
Vancouver Art Gallery · The largest Emily Carr collection anywhere; she sold almost nothing in her lifetime and ran a boarding house
Beaty Biodiversity Museum · A twenty-six-metre blue whale skeleton in the entrance, excavated from a Prince Edward Island beach
Museum of Vancouver · The roof is shaped like a woven cedar hat; the neon sign gallery is the city’s own best exhibit
Vancouver Maritime Museum · The St Roch is inside the building; she crossed the Northwest Passage in one season in 1944
Vancouver Police Museum · In the former coroner’s court and morgue; the autopsy suite is unchanged and clearly signed
Science World · The Expo 86 geodesic dome; 766 lights on the outside and it is a landmark before it is a museum

Holy places in Vancouver

The religious and civic landscape here is mostly a record of exclusion and what came after it. Within fifty years this city charged a head tax on Chinese arrivals, turned away a shipload of Sikh British subjects in its own harbour, interned its Japanese population and sold their property, and demolished its Black neighbourhood for a road. All four have now been formally apologised for and all four are marked on the ground, which is recent. The buildings below are where that is readable.

Komagata Maru Memorial · In 1914 a ship of 376 Sikh, Muslim and Hindu passengers was held in this harbour and turned back
Chinatown Millennium Gate · The head tax ran from 1885 to 1923 and reached five hundred dollars, about two years of wages
Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden · Built in 1986 by fifty-two artisans from Suzhou using no nails, screws or power tools
Powell Street, Japantown · Removed in 1942; their houses, boats and businesses were sold by the government without consent
Oppenheimer Park · The Asahi baseball team played here from 1914 and won the city league; the players were interned in 1942
Hogan’s Alley · Demolished in 1967 for a viaduct; the city apologised in 2022 and the viaducts are to come down
Christ Church Cathedral · 1895 and the oldest surviving church in the city; it was nearly demolished for an office tower in 1971
Brockton Point and the potlatch ban · The potlatch, the central ceremony of this coast, was illegal in Canada from 1884 until 1951

Nature and day trips near Vancouver

Vancouver is the only large Canadian city where it almost never snows, and the trade is rain: about twelve hundred millimetres a year, mostly between October and March, falling on roughly a hundred and sixty days. The upside is a temperate rainforest that comes right into the city and mountains at the end of the bus line — you can be on a ridge at a thousand metres forty minutes after leaving the downtown. The rules are simple: the free trails on the North Shore are not patrolled, the weather at a thousand metres is not the weather at sea level, and people get into trouble here every year.

Stanley Park · Remnant coastal rainforest, not landscaping; a 2006 windstorm brought down about ten thousand trees
The Seawall · Twenty-eight kilometres uninterrupted, the longest waterfront path in the world; separate lanes
Pacific Spirit Regional Park · Seventy-three kilometres of forest trail beside the university; free, and genuinely easy to get lost in
Lighthouse Park · Old-growth Douglas fir that was never cut, because the stand marked the harbour entrance for ships
Grouse Mountain · The Grind is 2.9 kilometres and 853 metres of gain; people do it as a lunchtime routine
Lynn Canyon · A free suspension bridge fifty metres over a granite gorge; the pools below are cold all year
Quarry Rock, Deep Cove · Ninety minutes return to a granite shelf over a fjord; parking requires a booking in summer
Spanish Banks at low tide · The tide goes out several hundred metres and you walk on the flats; check the tide table, not the clock

Things to do in Vancouver with kids

Vancouver is easy with children because almost everything is outdoors and free, and the one paid thing worth the money is the aquarium in Stanley Park. The practical calculation is rain: from November to March assume it, bring proper waterproofs rather than an umbrella, and have Science World and the aquarium in reserve. The transit is straightforward and children under twelve travel free on the whole system.

Vancouver Aquarium · In Stanley Park; it was the first aquarium in the world to stop keeping whales and dolphins, in 2018
Science World · The Expo 86 dome; four galleries, an outdoor water park in summer and the ball run is the draw
Granville Island Kids Market · Two floors of toy shops and a free water park outside it from June to September
Stanley Park miniature railway · A 2-kilometre narrow gauge loop through the forest; it runs different themes through the year
Second Beach pool · A heated outdoor saltwater pool in the park with a shallow end; open late June to September
Bloedel Conservatory · A warm dome with free-flying parrots; open every day of the year and cheap, which matters in February
Capilano Suspension Bridge · Expensive, and the free alternative at Lynn Canyon is twenty minutes further and almost as good
Grouse Mountain · A gondola, a lumberjack show, two rescued grizzly bears and snow from December to April

Nightlife in Vancouver

Vancouver has a reputation for closing early and it is partly deserved: the province ran some of the strictest liquor laws in North America for most of the twentieth century, and until 1986 it was illegal to have a drink without food in most rooms. That changed and the craft beer scene that followed is now one of the best on the continent — British Columbia has more breweries per head than almost any jurisdiction. Most bars close at one or two in the morning. The districts are Gastown, Main Street, Commercial Drive and the brewery row in East Vancouver.

Gastown · The cocktail bars are in the 1890s warehouses; the quarter was saved from a freeway in 1971
Main Street breweries · A dozen tasting rooms in a few blocks of old industrial buildings; most are family-sized operations
Commercial Drive · The oldest bar strip in the city that was never redeveloped; Italian, Ethiopian and Latin in one block
Granville Street · The club strip; the city closes it to traffic on weekend nights and it is the loudest part of town
Davie Village · The gay district since the 1970s, with pink bus shelters and a crosswalk painted in 2013
Orpheum and Vogue theatres · A 1927 vaudeville palace and a 1941 Art Deco cinema on the same street, both still working

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Frequently asked questions about Vancouver

What is there to see in Vancouver?

The top sights in Vancouver are Gastown and Maple Tree Square, The Steam Clock and Sam Kee Building. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Vancouver?

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

Is there a free walking tour in Vancouver?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Vancouver, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Sixty-eight days.

How do you get to Vancouver and get around?

The main ways are Vancouver International Airport, Waterfront Station and The SeaBus. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Vancouver, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Vancouver 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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