Montreal in 1 day: the old town, Notre-Dame and Mont Royal

Montreal is the North American city that most resembles Europe to Europeans, and it’s no accident: it’s the second French-speaking city in the world after Paris, it has an old town with sixteenth-century cobblestone streets and eats better than almost anywhere in North America. It sits on an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, with a hill in the middle — Mount Royal, which gives its name to everything — and an urban rule that has never been broken: no building can exceed the cross at the top. In one day you can fit the old city, a basilica that’s blue inside, the hill and the neighborhoods where people actually live.

Morning — The old city

3 km · 2 stages · from 9 to 12:30 · cobblestones, so wear comfortable shoes

1 — Vieux-Montréal and the old port

Time 2 hours · Free · Metro Place-d’Armes or Champ-de-Mars

Old Montreal is the piece of city born in 1642 as Ville-Marie, a French Catholic mission founded to convert the Iroquois. It has narrow cobblestone streets, gray stone buildings and signs in French: if it weren’t for the skyscrapers poking up behind, it could be a provincial town in Normandy.

The route: Place Jacques-Cartier uphill, with street musicians and terraces; the Marché Bonsecours, the neoclassical building with the silver dome, which has been a market, town hall and for a few years the parliament of Canada; and the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, the “sailors’ church,” with votive boats hanging from the ceiling and a bell tower terrace overlooking the port.

It ends at Vieux-Port, the waterfront converted into a walkway: there’s a observation wheel, there are rollerblades in summer and ice skating in winter. From here you can see the St. Lawrence River, which is enormous: it’s the waterway that made this city exist, because here the Lachine rapids stopped the boats and they had to unload.

2 — The Basilica of Notre-Dame

Time 1 hour · Ticket about $16 CAD · Closed to visitors during services

From outside the Notre-Dame Basilica is a severe neo-Gothic building, gray stone, from 1829. Inside it’s one of the most surprising churches in America: the vault is midnight blue with thousands of golden stars, the columns are painted, and the altar is lit from behind. It’s not marble: it’s all carved and painted wood, because marble wasn’t here and was too expensive to bring.

The stained glass windows don’t tell stories from the Bible but the religious history of Montreal, which is extremely rare. And the architect, James O’Donnell, was an Irish Protestant from New York: he converted to Catholicism at the end of the work and is the only person buried in the crypt.

Here Céline Dion got married, in 1994, and the state funeral of Maurice Richard, the great hockey player, was held. If you’re here in the evening, the Aura light show projects images on the vaults: very touristy, but technically remarkable.

Noon — The center, and the city under the city

2 km · 1 stage · from 12:30 to 3 p.m. · lunch included

3 — The center and the ville souterraine

Time 2.5 hours with lunch · Free · Metro Bonaventure or McGill

Modern Montreal has something no one expects: under its feet is another city. The ville souterraine, the underground city, is a network of thirty-two kilometers of pedestrian galleries connecting metro stations, shopping centers, universities, hotels, offices and concert halls. Half a million people pass through it every day.

It was born in the Sixties, with the construction of Place Ville-Marie, for an obvious reason once stated: here winter lasts five months and reaches twenty below zero. Underground you go to university, go shopping and go to the theater without putting on your coat. In summer it’s less useful, but it remains the fastest way to cross downtown, and you get happily lost.

Above, on the surface: rue Sainte-Catherine, the shopping street, and the campus of McGill University, which is a tree-filled park at the foot of the mountain. For lunch, two things to try at least once: Montreal’s bagel, smaller and sweeter than New York’s, boiled in water and honey and baked in a wood oven, and poutine, fries with fresh melted cheese curds and meat sauce, which is the national dish of Quebec and should be tried knowing it’s heavy.

Afternoon — Mount Royal

3 km · 1 stage · from 3 to 6 p.m. · with a climb of two hundred meters elevation

4 — The mountain in the middle of the city

Time 3 hours · Free · On foot from downtown, or bus 11 to the top

Mount Royal is a 233-meter hill in the middle of the island, and Montreal calls it the mountain. The park was designed in 1876 by Frederick Law Olmsted, the same one who designed Central Park: his idea was that the visitor would climb slowly, with the landscape changing, without ever seeing the destination before arriving. The town cut his budget and the project was only partially realized, but the layout is recognized.

You climb on foot from downtown in forty minutes, via a trail and a long staircase, or by bus. At the top is the Kondiaronk Belvedere, in front of the chalet, and from there you can see the whole city with its skyscrapers, the river and, on clear days, the mountains of the United States at the horizon.

The illuminated cross on top is thirty meters high and has been there since 1924: it commemorates a wooden cross planted in 1643 by the founder of the city as a vow, after a flood spared the mission. And it’s the reason for Montreal’s most famous rule: no building can be taller than the mountain, which keeps skyscrapers under two hundred meters and gives the city a low and orderly skyline.

On Sunday afternoons in summer, at the foot of the mountain, tam-tams are held: hundreds of people with drums around the monument to George-Étienne Cartier, people dancing, stalls. It goes on spontaneously since the Seventies and is one of the most beautiful things in the city.

Evening — The Plateau and Mile End

2 km · 1 stage · from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

5 — The neighborhoods where people live

Time 4 hours with dinner · Free · Metro Mont-Royal or Laurier

The Plateau Mont-Royal is the most photographed neighborhood in Montreal for a peculiar architectural feature: the external stairs, iron, often spiral, that go up from the sidewalk directly to the first floor. They’re everywhere, and they have a practical origin: in the early twentieth century a regulation required leaving a strip of green in front of houses, and putting stairs outside instead of inside saved heated space and allowed more apartments on the same lot. In winter they become icy and dangerous, and for decades they were banned; now they’re a protected element.

Next door is Mile End, the neighborhood that has been Jewish, then Greek and Portuguese, then artists: the Arcade Fire were born here, there’s the Ubisoft studio and there are the two historic bagel bakeries, rivals for seventy years, open twenty-four hours a day. Buying one hot at eleven at night is a local ritual.

For dinner: rue Saint-Denis and boulevard Saint-Laurent — which Montrealers call the Main and is historically the boundary line between the French city to the east and the English city to the west — are full of restaurants. Try the smoked meat, in one of the historic Jewish delicatessens: it’s corned beef brisket brined and smoked, served in a rye sandwich with mustard.

Many Plateau restaurants are apportez votre vin: they don’t have a license for alcohol and you bring the wine, buying it at the wine shop next door. It’s not allowed everywhere: check the sign, and it’s the best way to dine well spending less.

How to get around

The metro has four lines, is clean and punctual, and each station was designed by a different architect with its own works of art: it’s worth looking at them. Trains are on rubber wheels, like in Paris, and for this reason they are silent. A single ticket costs about $3.75 Canadian dollars, a daily ticket about $11 and always pays off.

The city is very bikeable: it has one of the most extensive networks of bike paths in North America and the public bike rental service BIXI, active from April to November, with stations everywhere. It’s the best way to tour the Plateau.

A note on language: French is the official language of Quebec and signs are in French by law. Downtown and in tourism English is understood everywhere, but starting with a bonjour changes the tone of the conversation — and it’s also why shopkeepers greet you with “bonjour-hi,” leaving the choice of language to you.

Frequently asked questions