Montreal keeps its past in layers: Iroquoian Hochelaga, a French mission colony of 1642, British conquest in 1760, and waves of Irish, Jewish and Italian arrivals. Three days of crypts, seigneurial manors, Expo pavilions and archive-rich museums.
Built directly over the birthplace of Ville-Marie, the museum's underground circuit walks you through the actual 1642 Catholic cemetery, the Saint-Pierre river collector sewer of 1832, and stone foundations of the first customs house.
Montreal's oldest stone church, rebuilt 1771 on 1655 foundations laid by Marguerite Bourgeoys. The archaeological crypt exposes the original chapel footprint and a Native encampment site; sailors' votive ship lamps hang from the nave.
Governor Claude de Ramezay's 1705 residence, later the Compagnie des Indes fur warehouse and Benjamin Franklin's 1776 headquarters during the American occupation. Nine rooms of New France furnishings plus the reconstructed Governor's Garden.
The 1685 Saint-Sulpice seminary beside Notre-Dame is Montreal's oldest surviving building. Two stone towers of the 1694 mission fort survive on Sherbrooke at Atwater, where Bourgeoys taught Iroquois converts before the Kahnawake move.
A British arsenal built 1820-24 after the War of 1812, its cut-stone barracks and powder magazine ring a parade ground where the Olde 78th Fraser Highlanders drill in summer. The building now sits within Espace pour la vie's island grounds.
Fuller's 76-metre geodesic sphere housed the American pavilion at Expo 67, Canada's centennial world's fair that drew over 50 million visits. Fire destroyed the acrylic skin in 1976, leaving the steel lattice as an accidental monument.
A 30-tonne boulder placed by Victoria Bridge workers in 1859 marking mass graves of roughly 6,000 Irish famine migrants who died in the 1847 typhus fever sheds at Windmill Point. It sits marooned on a median near the Victoria Bridge approach.
Founded in 1979 by survivors who settled here after 1945 — Montreal took in the third-largest survivor population in the world. Testimony recordings, a Torah scroll rescued from Czechoslovakia and objects donated by local families.
Boulevard Saint-Laurent below Mont-Royal was the immigrant reception corridor from the 1890s: Yiddish theatres, the Baron de Hirsch institute, garment sweatshops. The museum runs guided Main walks past surviving synagogue facades.
Opened 1825 to bypass the Lachine Rapids, the canal powered Canada's first industrial district — Redpath Sugar, Stelco, Northern Electric — and made Griffintown and Saint-Henri working-class strongholds until closure in 1970.
A 1698 fieldstone farmhouse where Marguerite Bourgeoys housed the filles du Roy — the roughly 800 women sent by Louis XIV between 1663 and 1673 to populate New France. Original queen-post roof frame, hearth and period kitchen garden.
Two burial grounds of the 1850s split along faith lines: Protestant Mount Royal holds Molson and Redpath dynasties, Catholic Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is Canada's largest cemetery with Calixa Lavallée and 1837 Patriote leaders.