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In the morning: Start your visit to Montréal by exploring some of its unique neighbourhoods. Head to the Plateau-Mont-Royal area by taking the subway to Sherbrooke station. Begin at Square Saint-Louis where you can admire the charming townhouses with their colourfully painted upper levels and curving staircases.

As you walk, keep your eyes open for some of the murals that decorate this area of the city. There is a multi-story one of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen on the corner of Napoléon and Saint-Dominique streets, and one featuring baseball player Jackie Robinson — the first African American to play in Major League Baseball and who debuted with the Montréal Royals — on Napoléon.

After, take the bus to the top of Mont Royal to explore its grassy and leafy summit, where you will encounter energetic locals biking, hiking and running along an extensive network of trails.

Around noon: Follow the staircases and pathways that lead from Mont Royal through the campus of McGill University into downtown. Stop for lunch at the Time Out Market located in the Centre Eaton de Montréal. Opened in 2019, the market includes more than a dozen food concepts created by the chefs of some of the city’s best restaurants. Try a plate of the Neapolitan-style pizzas at Moleskin or bowl of Vietnamese pho from Le Red Tiger.

In the afternoon: Walk from the Centre Eaton to the McCord Stewart Museum on Sherbrooke Street. The institution celebrates everything Montréal, chronicling the city’s past and present and stories of its diverse residents.

Its current exhibits include 20th-century fashion photography by Norman Parkinson and “Indigenous Voices of Today: Knowledge, Trauma, Resilience,” which includes artifacts from the museum’s Indigenous Cultures collection combined with stories from members of the 11 Indigenous nations in the province.

In the evening: End your first day in the city by checking into Hyatt Centric Ville-Marie Montréal, a recently opened hotel on Rue Notre-Dame next to the historic railway station, Place Gare Viger. Located in Old Montréal, it features 177 chic rooms, many with views of the Old Port, St. Lawrence River and harbourfront.

Enjoy dinner at the on-site Restaurant Cartier Arms. Dig into plates of rigatoni and braised beef covered in a chunky tomato sauce or the Cornish hen with roasted potatoes while admiring the views of the French château-style railway station through the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows.

After, walk the short distance to the waterfront and take a spin in one of the climate-controlled gondolas at La Grande Roue de Montréal. Located in the Old Port, this Ferris wheel soars 60 metres high offering one-of-a-kind views of the city and St. Lawrence River.

DAY TWO

In the morning: Enjoy breakfast at your hotel or, if you can wait, head to Chinatown where you can enjoy dim sum at popular spots like Ruby Rouge or Restaurant ChinaTown Kim Fung. Spend your morning walking in and out of stores along the pedestrian only portion of Rue de la Gauchetièr or admiring Place Sun Yat Sen, a public square with a traditional pavilion.

The roots of this neighbourhood, its boundaries are marked by four ornate gates, date back to the early 1890s. One of the oldest still-standing buildings is The Wings, located on the corner of de la Gauchetière and Coté streets, where fresh noodles and bilingual fortune cookies were made for decades.

You should also pop inside the Holiday Inn Montréal Centreville Downtown on the corner of Rue Saint-Urbain and Avenue Viger. Its restaurant is home to an ornate water feature complete with carved stone bridges and swimming koi.

Around noon: Stop for lunch at La Capital Taco, which serves authentic Mexican fare in the heart of Chinatown. (Its décor is a mix of the two, with, for example, a traditional fortune or lucky cat wearing a lucha libre wrestling mask.) Pair a plate of tacos, like its marinated pork or beer-battered fish, with a side of guacamole and one of its mezcal cocktails.

In the afternoon: Discover all the excitement in the Quartier des Spectacles, Montréal’s entertainment district featuring 80 venues and eight public squares that play host to 40 festivals each year. Events this summer include the Montréal International Jazz Festival from June 27 to July 6 and the International Nights of Africa Festival — with music, cultural performances and activities — taking place July 9 to 21.

In the evening: End your day with a meal at one of Montréal’s iconic restaurants, L’Express. Opened in 1980 by two theatre lovers, it attracts an eclectic mix of artists, families from the neighbourhood and trendy couples on date nights. Start with the chicken liver pâté with pistachios or the bone marrow with fleur de sel before moving on to main dishes like veal kidney in mustard sauce, roasted quail with wild rice or confit duck leg.

Follow dinner by heading to the Palais des congrès de Montréal for OASIS Immersion, a sound and light show where the floors, walls and ceilings of three gallery spaces transform into ethereal landscapes of plants, geometric patterns and paintings set to music. It is a walk-through experience with seating areas, so you can pass through each gallery at your own pace.

DAY THREE

In the morning: Hop into your car and make the 20-minute drive to Wellington Street in Verdun, which Time Out Index named the coolest street in the world in 2022. Once a French working-class neighbourhood, Verdun – and the street – is now a mix of quaint family-owned business that have operated for years and newer stores and boutiques. Step into Fromagerie Copette for fresh cheeses, Maltéhops for microbrews from around the province and Café le 5e for one of its zero-waste coffees.

Around noon: For a light lunch grab a hot sandwich from Bossa. The Italian delicatessen on Wellington stuffs its crusty bread full of tasty ingredients to make delicious cheese steak, porchetta, chicken cutlets and meatball sandwiches.

In the afternoon: Drive back to Montréal by following the waterfront to the Old Port to visit Pointe-à-Callière. An archaeology and history museum, it is built on the site of some of the city’s oldest European settlements and includes a mix of exhibits about world cultures and artifacts tied to the history and growth of Montréal.

The museum makes it possible for visitors to walk on a glass floor above the remains of Fort Ville-Marie, established in the 1640s, as well as tour a tunnel that was once part of the city’s first sewage collection system, which was built between 1832 and 1838.

In the evening: Depending on how hungry you are, you can head straight to dinner or experience one of the immersive lightshows the city is famous for. The Notre-Dame Basilica of Montréal is home to “Aura,” a 20-minute experience where enchanting visuals are projected on the interior walls, columns and ceiling of the Gothic revival building accompanied by a sound show.

After, it is a two-minute walk from the basilica to Babacool MTL, a modern eastern Mediterranean restaurant with a menu featuring shared plates of labneh, heated olives, braised lamb and tomato and cumin shrimp.

DAY FOUR

In the morning: Grab some bagels from one of the Montréal’s iconic spots, like the famous St-Viateur Bagel Shop, which has been operating since 1957, before heading to the Biodome in Montréal’s Olympic Park, where you can experience the wonders of nature indoors.

Walking through the expansive building, you will encounter plants and animals from different ecosystems across North and South America, including a tropical rainforest, the polar regions (including penguins from Antarctica) and the Laurentian Forest.

Around noon: Drop into Place Ville Marie. It features opportunities for shopping and is the temporary home of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal while its original location at the Place des festivals undergoes a redesign and extension.

A few steps away from the museum is Le Cathcart Restaurants & Biergarten, a food hall perfect for a light lunch. Try the chicken bowl filled with rice, pico de gallo, feta cheese and a crema lima sauce from Tulum Taqueria, or an order of pho or pad Thai from southeast Asian kiosk Hà.

In the afternoon: Fuel up on fresh bread, pastries, cheeses and coffee at one of the city’s markets, such as the Jean Talon Market in Little Italy or the Marché Atwater close to the Lachine Canal. If you want to learn more about the markets in Montréal, Spade & Palacio offers a Beyond the Market walking tour of the different venues in the city during the warmer months.

In the evening: Celebrate your final night in Montréal with a meal at Maggie Oakes, a modern grill specializing in aged meats located in the Hôtel William Gray. Begin your culinary experience with a plate of crispy shrimp and the salmon tartare with dill before savouring the lobster pappardelle or the 55-day aged New York steak.