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Montreal city overview

Montreal is Canada's most romantic metropolis, an island city that seems to favor grace and elegance over order and even prosperity, a city full of music, art and a Gallic sense of joie de vivre. Its name derives from a 764-foot hill called Mont-Royal, set right in the town center. Montreal represent a vibrant and beautiful place abundant of memories, dreams, and festivals, that blends a brash New World urbanity with the effusive charm of its European-flavoured historic districts.

The skyscrapers of downtown Montreal are part of a bustling commercial city, but the old city of Vieux-Montreal, replete with the beautiful stone houses and streets, is its cultural heart. In old Montreal the cabarets, cafes, coffee houses, and clubs stay open until the early morning. One can enjoy European cafe life while listening to jazz, blues, French, English, or American pop music, or just talking in the sun while sitting at a sidewalk cafe.

Montreal has a long history of reconciling contradictions and even today is a city of contrasts. It is the only French-speaking metropolis in North America, but it's a tolerant place that over the years has made room for millions of immigrants who speak dozens of languages. Today about 15% of the 3.1 million people who live in the metropolitan area claim English as their mother tongue, and another 15% claim a language that's neither English nor French.

The city has fantastic parks and gardens that offer year round recreational opportunities including walking, picnicking, jogging, horseback riding, bicycling, tobogganing, ice skating, and cross-country skiing. The jazz and art scene immediately engage the visitor, and the nightlife is unrivaled in its zest and variety. Montreal is a city of culture, of tradition, of excitement and of promise. There is always yet another delightful corner of this fascinating, fun city to discover.

Olimpic Parc (Olimpic Park)

The Olympic Park was the site of the 1976 Olympic Games. The unique – and costly (over C$1 billion) – Olympic Stadium is now the venue for concerts and Montreal Expos baseball games. Half- hour guided tours are available and visitors can also take a funicular (cable car) ride up the world’s tallest inclined tower (175m).

Housed within the former velodrome at the Olympic Complex is the spectacular Biodome, which re-creates four distinct ecosystems and is home to 5000 plants and 4000 animals, including the too-cute penguins, monkeys and alligators. Visitors can move from a tropical rainforest to a polar world, with stops in a Laurentian forest and St Lawrence marine environment en route.

Jardin Botanique (botanical garden), with 181 acres of plantings in summer and 10 exhibition greenhouses open all year, is the second-largest attraction of its kind in the world (after England's Kew Gardens). Founded in 1931, the garden has more than 26,000 species of plants. Among the 30 thematic gardens are a rose garden and an alpine garden; the poisonous-plant garden is a favorite. Traditional tea ceremonies are held in the Japanese Garden, which also has one of the best bonsai collections in the West. The Tree House exhibit center in the arboretum explores the world of the forest. The Jardin des Premier Nations, or the First Nations Garden, includes such indigenous plants and trees as silver birch, maples, Labrador, and tea and jack-in-the-pulpit. Other highlights are the 5-acre Montreal-Shanghai Lac de Reve, the largest Ming-style Chinese garden outside Asia, with seven elegant pavilions and a 30-ft rock garden built around a pool, and the Insectarium, displaying some of the world's most beautiful insects, not to mention some of its sinister ones. In November and early December, check out the award-winning ‘Insect Tasting’ (Croque-insectes), an event which features expertly cooked, spiced and sauced insects for your eating enjoyment!

Parc des Iles (Islands’ Park)

Within the park, made up of the pleasure islands of Ile St Helene and Ile Notre Dame, you'll find the huge spaceship-like Casino de Montreal, a Grand Prix racetrack cum inline skate park, an Olympic rowing basin that becomes a giant skate rink in the winter, the popular Biosphere and miles of lush, open parkscape, perfect for cycling, strolling or rolling around. There is also the Plage des Iles, an artificial sandy beach replete with chemically treated, filtered water, the beach is safe for swimming, and picnic facilities make it a tip-top summer spot.

La Ronde Amusement Park fills the northern reaches of the Ile Ste-Helene with a sailing lagoon, an "Enchanted Forest" with costumed storytellers, and a Western town with a saloon. There are also Ferris wheels, carousels, roller coasters, carnival booths, and plenty of places to eat and drink. Thrill-seekers will love rides like Le Boomerang, Le Monstre, and Le Cobra, a stand-up roller coaster that incorporates a 360° loop and reaches speeds in excess of 97km (60 miles) per hour. While many of the 35 rides test adult nerves and stomachs, there are ample attractions for youngsters, such as the Tchou Tchou Train and the Super Volcanozor, which combines 3-D images of dinosaurs with swooping, twirling transport among them.