Vancouver's culture sits at the collision of Northwest Coast Indigenous art, Art Deco shipping wealth and a restless young gallery scene. Three days move from Emily Carr canvases to Erickson's concrete, Chinatown archives and Main Street murals.
Four floors inside Francis Rattenbury's 1906 neoclassical courthouse hold some 12,000 works, including the world's largest Emily Carr collection. Open 10:00–17:00 daily, Tuesdays until 20:00 when entry is by donation.
A compact two-storey gallery devoted to Haida master Bill Reid, built around the 8.5-metre bronze frieze Mythic Messengers plus his gold and argillite jewellery. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00–17:00.
Moshe Safdie's 1995 elliptical library wraps a nine-storey glass atrium in a free-standing colonnade often compared to the Colosseum. Level 9 opens onto a rooftop garden with unobstructed downtown sightlines.
This 1930 Art Deco tower was briefly the tallest in the British Empire. The lobby is a terracotta reef of seahorses, crabs and steamships, with brass-doored elevators inlaid in twelve species of hardwood.
Arthur Erickson's post-and-beam concrete Great Hall frames house posts and totem poles against 15-metre glass walls facing Point Grey. Bill Reid's yellow-cedar Raven and the First Men anchors the rotunda.
The neon-sign gallery and reconstructed 1950s living rooms trace the city decade by decade, housed under Gerald Hamilton's crab-crowned conical roof in Vanier Park beside the Space Centre.
The A-frame hall in Vanier Park was built around the RCMP schooner St. Roch, the first vessel to cross the Northwest Passage in both directions. You board the 1928 decks and duck below the waterline.
A 1927 Beaux-Arts vaudeville palace on Granville seating 2,688 under a domed ceiling mural and a Czech crystal chandelier. Home stage of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra from September through June.
The first full-size Ming-dynasty scholar's garden built outside China, assembled in 1986 by 52 artisans from Suzhou using no nails, screws or power tools. Jade-green water, limestone rockery, hourly guided tours.
Oral histories, family photographs and artefacts trace 150 years of Chinese Canadian life in Vancouver, from head-tax certificates to the 1907 anti-Asian riots. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11:00–17:00 on East Pender.
More than 350 large-format murals cover brick walls and loading bays between Main, Quebec and Broadway, added each August since 2016. Self-guided routes start around Main Street and 6th Avenue.
A 1930s single-screen cinema on Main Street that ran as a porn house until 2014 and now programs live music, drag, film nights and comedy in a 300-capacity room, original marquee still lit outside.