CA
What to see in Montreal on foot
14 sights worth the detour, all walkable, all offline.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Montreal offline.
Montreal is a city made for walking. This self-guided guide maps 14 of its sights worth the detour — landmarks, historic sites, museums and galleries and parks and gardens — the places locals point to and the tour buses skip, close enough to string into a single day on foot. Download the Montreal pack in Voyage GO before you go and the whole route works offline: no roaming, no dead battery from a live map. Every monument, viewpoint and park you pass quietly fills your travel passport.
Landmarks8
- 1Circuit Gilles VilleneuveThe track where Gilles Villeneuve beat the world on home soil in 1978 — and it now carries his name.
- 2Olympic StadiumThe stadium that cost so much, Montreal renamed it "The Big Owe."
- 3Bell CentreCanada's largest indoor arena holds 20,962 people — and on a Canadiens night, the noise travels several city blocks.
- 4Habitat 67A McGill thesis project that actually got built — 354 prefabricated concrete boxes stacked into homes on the Saint Lawrence for a 1967 World's Fair.
- 5Notre-Dame BasilicaDeep blue vaults scattered with gold stars, and a 7,000-pipe organ that fills every corner of it.
- 6Saint Joseph's OratoryThe only building in Montreal that breaches the bylaw barring any structure from surpassing Mount Royal — rising more than 30 metres above its summit.
- 7Berri-UQAMThe station where Montreal's Metro was switched on in 1966 — and still the busiest crossroads in the entire system.
- 8Lionel-GroulxThe floor looks like autumn leaves, and switching metro lines here costs you nothing but a few sideways steps.
Historic Sites3
- 9Montreal City HallThe balcony where Charles de Gaulle delivered his "Vive le Québec libre" speech in 1967.
- 10Mary, Queen of the World CathedralBishop Bourget built a deliberate scale model of Saint Peter's in Rome to win a church turf war — and planted it in an English neighbourhood to make the point sharper.
- 11Montreal ForumFifteen Stanley Cups were clinched on ice that is now a cinema floor.
Museums & Galleries2
- 12Montreal Museum of Fine ArtsCanada's oldest art museum, founded in 1860, now sprawls across five pavilions and draws more visitors than any other art museum in the country.
- 13Montreal BiosphèreBuckminster Fuller's geodesic dome — built for the 1967 World's Fair as the US pavilion — now holds an environment museum on a Montreal island.
Parks & Gardens1
- 14Montreal Botanical GardenBorn in the Depression and now a National Historic Site, this 75-hectare garden is where Montrealers come simply to sit under trees.
