Downtown, Montreal Ville-Marie

Other downtown sights in Montreal include the spacious Place du Canada, with a statue (1895) to Sir John Macdonald, the country's first Prime Minister (1867), in a group representing Canada and her seven children, or the seven provinces as they were then.

The church of Mary, Queen of the World, east of Place du Canada is the Catholic cathedral which was built in 1894 as a smaller version of St Peter's in Rome. The massive statues represent the patron saints of the Archbishopric of Montréal in the 19th c.

Dorchester Square is reached by crossing Boulevard René-Lévesque. In its green gardens stands a statue by Emile Brunnet (1953) honoring Wilfrid Laurier, the French-Canadian statesman and Prime Minister of Canada from 1896 to 1911. Buildings around the square, which is also graced by Henry Moore's sculpture "Reclining Figure" (1962), include the Victorian bulk of the former Hotel Windsor (1878, renovated in 1985), the Neo-Classic Sun Life skyscraper, the city's oldest and put up between 1918 and 1933, and the towering Banque de Commerce Canadienne Impériale (1962), its 45 floors an example of a very fine architectural style that stands out from the often monotonous functionalism of many modern structures.

Rue Ste-Cathérine, which can be reached from Dorchester Square, is Montréal's main shopping thoroughfare, bustling with life and lined with department stores and shops of all kinds, as well as a host of eating places, ranging widely in the type of food on offer, as well as price.It also leads to such other commercial centers as Cours Mont-Royal and the Promenade de la Cathédrale.

Place Montréal Trust is a futuristic marble and glass "megastructure", the creation of César Pelli and Mario Botta, which has become one of Montreal's most popular meeting places. In addition to expensive shops the complex houses a number of service enterprises.

Christ Church Cathedral, a Gothic revival Anglican Cathedral in Montreal, dates from 1859. The statue in front of the cathedral (1870) is of Francis Fulford, the city's first Anglican Archbishop.

The Maison des Coopérants in Montreal, along the Rue University, is a massive glass and concrete tower, its own twin spires more or less a counterpoint to those on the façade of the cathedral.

The Place-des-Arts metro station, on the northern edge of downtown Montréal, gives access to the city's modern center for the performing arts, the Place-des-Arts, built in 1964. It contains four venues - the Salle Wilfried-Pelletier (capacity about 3,000), home to the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and where Canada's top ballet companies take the stage, the Théâtre Maisonneuve, seating for about 1300, the Théâtre Port-Royal, seating for 755, and the recital room, the Café de la Place, with seating for 138.

The Musée d'art contemporain de Montreal on the south side of the square, is particularly worth a visit. Young French-Canadian artists are accorded special prominence.The museum is part of Place des Arts, a complex dedicated to visual and performing arts.

Between Rue Sainte-Cathérine and Boulevard René-Lévesque in Montreal, stands the huge imposing Complexe Desjardins, 1976, with numerous shops, cinemas, banks and a post office.There are more shopping arcades in the nearby Complexe Guy-Fabreau.

Montréal's Chinatown is centered around the Rue de la Gauchetière, with two Chinese arches marking the heart of the quarter. This dates from the late 1860s when many of the Chinese laborers who had come to work in the mines and on building the railroad moved into the cities in search of a better life. Today's Chinatown is no longer exclusively Chinese but a place where anyone can relax and enjoy a good meal.

On the Rue Baile in Montreal, is an attraction of a rather special kind - the Center Canadien d'Architecture. This quite exceptional museum, housed in an elegant post-modern building by Phyllis Lambert and Peter Ross, boasts an unusually comprehensive collection of architectural drawings and photographs, together with a library and archive.The Center Canadien d'Architecture hosts a variety of temporary exhibits. The extensive Collection enables the CCA the be a leading voice in advancing knowledge, promoting public understanding, and widening thought on architecture, its history, theory, practice, and role in society today.

To the west of the Parc Olympique in Montreal, on the other side of the Rue Pie IX, stands the palatial villa Château Dufresne, built in 1918 for the shoe manufacturer Thomas Dufresne. Modelled on the Petit Trianon at Versailles it today displays temporary art and history exhibitions.

It is worth paying a visit to the "Village". Between the Rues Saint-Denis and Papineau, it is a lively, colorful quarter comparable with New York's Greenwich Village. The restoration of the old houses has been going on for years, as its developing social and cultural life has unfolded around them.

Square Saint-Louis, reached by taking the metro to Sherbrooke Station, is one of Montréal's prettiest old squares, set in a turn-of-the-century French-Canadian residential quarter. In the little streets around the tree-shaded square there are still a few of the attractive Victorian houses, some of them now pleasant restaurants. Part of the Rue Saint-Denis and the pedestrian mall along the Rue Prince-Arthur at the western end of the square are given over in summer to outdoor cafés, etc., in fact all the lively street life of a modern bohemian quarter.

The Boulevard Saint-Laurent, one of Montréal's main shopping streets, marks the dividing line between the French-Canadians on one side and the Anglo-Canadians on the other, but in fact is highly cosmopolitan along its length, especially around the Rue Laurier where newcomers tended to first settle down in the 18th c. Between 1900 and 1930 the district was predominantly Jewish, then Greek, followed by Eastern Europeans and most recently Hispanics. As all the different cultures mix and mingle in a welter of languages, the many small stores selling specialties from all over the world give parts of the street quite a bazaar-like atmosphere.

Being so close to the city this man-made island of Île Notre-Dame with its lake of the same name and Bassin Olympique (where the Olympic rowing events were held) is an immensely popular recreation area.In 1980 Île Notre-Dame played host to "Les Floralies", the world-famous International Garden Festival. Flower lovers can still enjoy the splendor of the displays adorning the lovely gardens.

The principal attraction of the Cité du Havre (across the Pont de la Concorde from Île Sainte-Hélène) is the housing project known as Habitat '67. It was designed by the Israeli-born architect Moshe Safdie as one of the grandiose schemes of Expo '67 to provide low-cost futuristic inner-city housing, but was never actually completed in its entirety. Now rather past their prime, these precast concrete uniform building blocks with their terraces and in their great variety of combinations do provide a far from standard alternative to municipal housing in boring tower blocks or monotonous estates.

The Maison Saint-Gabriel, a charming old stone farmhouse in the Saint-Gabriel district near where the Champlain Bridge crosses the St Lawrence River, dates from 1698. It was restored in 1960 and turned into a museum of colonial life, with exhibits from the 17th to 19th centuries.Originally the farmhouse was where the "filles du Roy" lived, the unmarried young women sent over by the King of France to provide Nouvelle France with plenty of offspring to carry on the French line.

The Planétarium de Montréal offers an audiovisual presentation on astronomy and space exploration. The planetarium has operated here since 1966, although plans are underway to create a new planetarium that would open in 2010.

Bell Centre in Montreal is a sports facility and home to the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. The complex can hold up to 21,000 spectators and is also used to accommodate large concerts and other events.

The Grey Nuns Museum, containing furniture and other items that belonged to the Holy Marguerite D'Youville, is housed in the motherhouse of the Grey Nuns.