Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral
Bishop 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.
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Ordered in 1852 to replace a burned cathedral, this minor basilica was chosen to outmanoeuvre the Sulpician order and the Anglican Church, both of which favoured Neo-Gothic. Quebec's third-largest church runs 101 metres long with a 77-metre cupola overhead. The interior holds an unusual relic of mid-19th-century papal politics: the 507 Canadians Bourget dispatched to defend Rome are commemorated here.
What to look for
- Marble slabs bearing 507 names in gold lettering — the Canadian Zouaves Bourget sent to defend the Papal States from Victor Emmanuel II's troops
- The cupola, 23 metres across, modelled directly on St. Peter's in Rome
- Lionel Royer's 1885 painting of Colonel Athanase de Charette, commander of the Papal Zouaves
1085 Cathedral Street, at the corner of René Lévesque Boulevard and Metcalfe Street, on Dorchester Square; Bonaventure metro is the nearest stop.
Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral is one of 14 sights worth the detour in Montreal, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Montreal pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Montreal
- Circuit Gilles VilleneuveThe track where Gilles Villeneuve beat the world on home soil in 1978 — and it now carries his name.
- Olympic StadiumThe stadium that cost so much, Montreal renamed it "The Big Owe."
- Bell CentreCanada's largest indoor arena holds 20,962 people — and on a Canadiens night, the noise travels several city blocks.
- Habitat 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.
- Notre-Dame BasilicaDeep blue vaults scattered with gold stars, and a 7,000-pipe organ that fills every corner of it.
- Montreal 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.