Downtown Toronto
Toronto is a city with a financial core, much like many of its American counterparts. For this reason, the city has often been chosen as a filming location for movies set in Chicago, New York, or any other city with many skyscrapers.
A brief visit to downtown will give you an idea of Toronto’s modern architectural wealth. Most of the towers are not open to the public; however, an underground network connects them to facilitate movement during winter or inclement weather.
Among the tallest towers in downtown Toronto are:
- First Canadian Place (pictured) – 72 floors, 298 m
- The St. Regis Tower – 59 floors, 291 m
- Scotia Plaza – 68 floors, 275 m
- TD Canada Trust Tower – 53 floors, 261 m
- Commerce Court West – 57 floors, 239 m
- Toronto-Dominion Tower – 56 floors, 223 m
- Bay Adelaide Centre West Tower – 51 floors, 218 m
Yorkville
Once a hippie and somewhat dangerous neighbourhood, Yorkville has undergone a profound transformation. Today, it is the most upscale and prestigious district in Toronto. Here, you’ll find art galleries, cigar shops and restaurants that are often more expensive than they are good. During the Toronto International Film Festival, the area is filled with socialites cruising in their Lexus, Porsche, or Bentley.
Undoubtedly a luxury district, Yorkville is worth a visit if you have a taste for refined products and the finest things money can buy! The neighbourhood is made up of five main streets and avenues: Avenue Road, Yorkville, Hazelton, Cumberland, and the section of Bloor Street between Yonge Street and Avenue Road.
In this area, you’ll find Cartier, Tiffany, Holt Renfrew, and much more. And when you need to do your grocery shopping, there’s, of course, a Whole Foods. You’ll also come across high-end brands such as Burberry, Prada, Gucci, Hugo Boss, Chanel, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Escada, Ermenegildo Zegna, Cartier, Harry Rosen, Calvin Klein, Cole Haan, Vera Wang, Lacoste, Ferrari, Maserati, Rolls-Royce, Williams-Sonoma, Bang & Olufsen, Betsey Johnson, Max Mara, Montblanc, Bulgari, Birks, Guerlain, and Swarovski.
The CN Tower
This 40,000-cubic-meter concrete tower, built in the 1970s, was originally designed for a purely utilitarian purpose. At the time, the cost of using satellites was so prohibitive that television broadcasting relied primarily on large terrestrial antennas.
To reach the widest possible audience, this 500-meter-high tower was constructed to house a radio and television antenna capable of transmitting signals over a vast area. A Sikorsky helicopter was used to install and position the more than 100-meter-long antenna.
Interestingly, like its French counterpart, it has become the architectural symbol of Toronto. Initially criticized—just as the Eiffel Tower once was—the CN Tower is now a major downtown tourist attraction, featuring a restaurant, observation areas, and an interactive activity center.
The Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum is not a museum dedicated to the history of Ontario or Canada, but to world cultures and natural history. As the fifth largest museum in North America, its collections consist of around six million objects. Therefore, the ROM houses numerous paleontological specimens, notably from the age of the dinosaurs, as well as objects from the Near East, Africa, and East Asia.
Architect Daniel Libeskind designed the north façade, intended to resemble a crystalline form, but the result was highly contested in the local press. The building is thus a blend of Neo-Roman, Neo-Byzantine, and Gothic Renaissance styles, in addition to Libeskind’s contribution.
The Art Gallery of Ontario
The Art Gallery of Ontario, locally known by its acronym AGO, is an art museum with over 60,000 works housed in a space located between downtown and the Chinatown district. Among the many works on display, you will find pieces by Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Vincent van Gogh, Henry Moore, and Andy Warhol, in addition to great Canadian artists such as Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, Cornelius Krieghoff, and Emily Carr. The museum’s façade was recently renovated with the addition of architectural elements designed by the famous Canadian Frank Gehry.
The Art Gallery of Ontario, known locally by its acronym AGO, is an art museum housing over 60,000 works in a space located between downtown and the Chinatown neighborhood.
Among the many pieces on display, you will find works by Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Vincent van Gogh, Henry Moore, and Andy Warhol, in addition to those by major Canadian artists such as Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, Cornelius Krieghoff, and Emily Carr.
The museum’s facade was recently renovated with the addition of architectural elements conceived by the famous Canadian Frank Gehry.
Toronto’s ChinatownS
You read the title correctly. There is not just one Chinatown in Toronto, but several. The oldest Chinatown no longer exists and is currently occupied by Toronto’s city hall. After the destruction of the old Chinatown, the majority of Chinese restaurants and businesses settled around the Dundas & Spadina intersection. This neighbourhood is one of the largest Chinatowns on the continent, but real estate pressure has already pushed many Chinese residents to move to the eastern part of the city, to the Riverdale neighbourhood.
The second Chinatown is known in Toronto as ‘East Chinatown.’ Note that you can travel from Dundas and Spadina Chinatown to East Chinatown via the 505 streetcar (20 minutes or more). New Chinese immigrants, generally more economically comfortable and from Hong Kong, no longer settle in these neighbourhoods but in the suburbs of Markham and Richmond Hill, where many shopping centres and restaurants can be found.
What you can do in Chinatown:
- Eat Dim Sum, a Cantonese culinary tradition consisting of a series of small portions steamed, baked, fried, or sautéed.
- Enjoy Sichuan, Cantonese, or Vietnamese cuisine.
- Buy exotic teas: white tea, green tea, jasmine tea, oolong tea, pu-erh tea.
- Find inexpensive souvenirs: rings, lesser quality jade pieces, old Chinese coins, Indochina trade dollars, hematite bracelets…
- Grab a snack at one of the Chinese bakeries: choose your items with tongs, pay at the counter, and then sit down. – Stroll through the fruit and vegetable markets…
Kensington Market
It is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city, once one of its main Jewish quarters. Over the decades, a significant transformation has taken place and the neighbourhood has become a Bohemian and multicultural commercial centre. Although synagogues can still be found there, the Jewish population left the area to settle in new neighbourhoods to the north of the city.
Today, Kensington Market features markets offering goods from Central and South America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Jamaica. There are many ethnic and vegetarian restaurants. A true cultural patchwork, the neighbourhood is worth a visit because it reveals, on a small scale, the real diversity of Toronto.
Queen West
The trendiest street in Toronto is undoubtedly Queen West. Named in honour of Queen Victoria, this street was once one of the city’s main east-west arteries. Today, it is synonymous with everything trendy in Toronto—you can even grab a yerba maté here!
While major brands have taken over the stretch between University Avenue and Spadina Avenue, don’t be discouraged—Queen West continues for at least another 3 kilometres, lined with fashion stores, cozy cafés and restaurants, trendy boutiques, boutique hotels, nightclubs, and even a music store selling an impressive collection of vinyl records!
The street is traversed from end to end by the 501 streetcar line, which is undoubtedly the best way to explore it, as car traffic can be quite frustrating.