The historic center of Montreal, Vieux-Port is home to some of the city's most antiquated buildings and picturesque streets. Along the waters of the St. Lawrence River, the bank of Old Port features museums, festivals, food stalls, and outdoor athletics, a celebrated part of the city that explodes into fireworks displays on warm summer nights. At its center, street performers and artists compete with sprawling restaurant terraces for space along Jacques-Cartier Square, while the cobbled streets of Rue St. Paul and Rue Notre-Dame offer a reprieve of quiet galleries and atmospheric wine bars. Horse-drawn carriages are not an uncommon part of traffic, and the narrows they traverse are lined with boutiques, crêperies, and poutine shops enshrined in buildings of stone and wooden lattices. Here you can evoke Montreal's past with a traditional cooking lesson or historical tour, then enjoy its artistic present with live music and theater.

The bar-none entertainment district for music and arts, Quartier des Spectacles is an interactive playground that delights the senses. It totals over 30 performance halls, with the vibrant Place des Festivals at its heart. The outdoor event space features glowing towers, glass edifices, and granite-lined bike paths, and hosts annual festivals, concerts, and comedy nights. The cinema, theaters, and exhibition centers are entwined with external art projects, exemplified at Montreal's Contemporary Art Museum and appearing along every walkway of the Promenade des Artistes in the form of sculpture and public works, from digitally-enhanced swingsets to glowing fountains. Design, performance, and alternative music come together here, a stone's throw from the lively Latin Quarter along Rue Saint-Denis, the quintessential after-party spot for dinner and a drink following a day of jazz, poetry and play.

Designed to connect and beautify unused space, today the Quartier International is like a transversal piece of modern art. The distinctive design flair is most apparent at its focal point, the Palais des Congres, a convention center and retail space with a multi-colored glass exterior and an equally bold interior motif. Outdoors too, the Quartier is friendly towards public art exhibits along its stylish, plotted city squares, with extra-wide sidewalks meant to encourage long strolls and shaded benches available for absorbing the atmosphere. Fresh air and promenades characterize the area, from the foliage of Victoria Square to the fountain of Place Jean-Paul Riopelle, while the restaurants along Rue Saint-Antonie Ouest and Metro stops modeled in the Parisian style give off European glamour.