Downtown Montreal

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Downtown (also known by its French name, Centre-ville) is the business center of today's Montreal. Not as distinctive-looking as Old Montreal it nevertheless contains quite a few architecturally significant buildings, especially if you're into modern architecture. Rue St-Catherine or at least, its downtown portion, is the main shopping artery of the city. It is nearly always brimming with people.

Hotels

Most downtown hotels are located on or near rue Sherbrooke in the area neighboring McGill University. Another pocket of hotels is in the southern section, along Boulevard René-Lévesque. The typical downtown hotel is a high-rise tower. Most hotels are well-known chains (Sofitel, Hilton, Sheraton) and the amenities are fairly standard. One hotel, housed in a refurbished 16-story former office building, stands out from the crowd with its contemporary design: Hôtel Le Germain, opened in 1999, belongs to a smaller hotel group, Groupe Germain.

In 2007, a new high-end hotel/condo combination, Hotel Le Crystal (1100 rue de la Montagne) opened on Boulevard René-Lévesque.

» See our list of selected Downtown Montreal Hotels

Restaurants

Both studenty (thanks to two major campuses - Concordia and McGill) and business-oriented, Downtown Montreal is actually a rather sparse neighborhood for good dining, but it has its pockets of activity - for example, Peel Street above St-Catherine and Crescent Street.

For consistently good bistro food, try L'Entrecôte St-Jean on rue Peel. Just one block south, more expensive and business-oriented, Café Trattoria Ferreira serves upscale Portuguese food. Our contributors find most restaurants on rue Crescent to be rather mediocre and touristtrappy.

The situation is better when you want a snack or when you're lunching. Café-wise, we recommend Nocochi or Vasco de Gama. For good sandwiches, Holt Renfrew Café with its Poilâne bakery bread (yes, delivered from Paris daily) is an excellent choice.

» See our list of selected Downtown Montreal Restaurants

Sights

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is Montreal's biggest museum. Its principal building, which sits directly opposite the original 1912 pavilion, was built by Montreal's most famous modern architect, Moshe Safdie in 1991.

Downtown business core consists of skyscrapers built from the early 1960's to the late 1990's, mainly along Blvd René-Lévesque. Among them, 1 Place Ville Marie (IM Pei and Henry N Cobb, 1962) is perhaps the most recognizable, despite its simple form.

» See our list of selected Downtown Montreal Sights

Shopping

Shopping is one of Downtown's raisons d'être. Rue St-Catherine (Ste-Catherine Street) between Rue de Bleury and Rue Guy is essentially one long shopping mall. However, as one would expect from a mall, your choices are mostly major brands. Few indendently-owned boutiques can afford to rent in this area (and, frankly, even brand outlets are sometimes cash-negative here; companies often keep them simply as "flagship stores", purely for prestige).

If you're more of a boutique shopper type, you might want to check out stores in Le Plateau, Mile End and Old Montreal.

Downtown Stores come in two varieties - some (like Apple or H&M) have full-blown brand presence, complete with a direct street entrance; others are housed inside one of the several large shopping centers - the Complex Les Ailes, Eaton Centre, Place Ville Marie, or Place Montreal Trust. The second kind is more common, so most small stores are inside one of those centers.

Articles, Updates and Reviews

You gain some, you lose some. While the city is busy adding thousands of hotels rooms (we wrote about one new project last month), some in the hospitality business decided they'd had enough of the Montreal market.

The management of the Omni Mont-Royal hotel on Sherbrooke street has announced its decision to close the 32-year old 299-room property (which had previously been operated under the brands of Westin and Four Seasons) on Dec 10th, citing "operational difficulties"...

Read the rest of: "Hotel Omni on Rue Sherbrooke to Close"»

The voting process for the name of Montreal's citywide bike rental program is over and the winner is chosen. The system is going to be called "BIXI".

Over the next month, demo bikes will be wheeled around the city and public demonstrations will be held. According to the city's mayor, Gérald Tremblay, by next spring Montreal will count 2,400 bikes at more than 300 solar-powered stations...

Read the rest of: "BIXI: Bike, Taxi, Montreal"»

Construction crews are still crawling over the central tower of the new Hilton Garden Inn on Rue Sherbrooke, but the hotel is already open for business, as made evident not only by the banner that says as much, but also by a quasi-permanent line of cabs picking up departing guests...

Read the rest of: "New Hilton Garden Inn / Centre-ville"»

Back in July, Apple opened a flagship store in Montreal of which yours truly has already had an opportunity to be a customer.

The store is ninth in the list of Apple's flagship stores world-wide (the others are in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, London, Tokyo, Osaka and New York) and the first of the kind in Canada...

Read the rest of: "Apple Opens Montreal Flagship Store"»

As many press outlets have reported, the Waldorf=Astoria hotel will open a Montreal outpost some time in 2011. A 250-room, 76-residence monster (officially named The Waldorf=Astoria Hotel & Residences Montreal) will rise a few blocks west of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art...

Read the rest of: "Waldorf=Astoria Hotel to Open in Montreal"»