All cities have secrets, Montréal perhaps more than most. Many new visitors touring the city find themselves so enthralled with its marquee sites — the cobblestoned Old Port, the festival district, shops lining rue Sainte-Catherine — that they overlook its abundant eccentricities.
But when we asked Vermont writers to share their favorite ways to explore a less familiar side of Montréal, they delivered a traveler’s esoterica, recommending sites like a reliquary where pilgrims seek miraculous cures and an F1 racetrack where the black-and-white checkered flag marks an annual return to slower pleasures. They shared graveyard walking tours, a boho-cool music venue and hidden Jazz Age gardens beneath crystalline canopies.
Here’s how to follow Seven Days staffers and contributors to some of the city’s most thrillingly unexpected spots.
Cirque du Quirk
Le Monastère, 1439 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest, tickets start at CA$38
Light poured down from the peaked ceiling of the 1864 St-Jax Church, illuminating the transfixed faces of my fellow congregants. A woman swathed in a long hank of silk unspooled herself from the ceiling, her body a slow ripple of muscle. Applause erupted when she took a bow. The crowd at Le Monastère, a nonprofit circus that holds cabaret-style shows in the former Anglican church on rue Sainte-Catherine, surged toward Le P’tit Sacristain — the Lil’ Sexton — a bar fashioned from pews and serving drinks of the strictly non-sacramental variety.
In the world of Montréal circus, Cirque du Soleil is canon. The global company is headquartered there, and its big top shows — including ECHO, which returns to the Old Port in May and June — are slickly produced masterworks. I go to Le Monastère for something entirely different: routines that artists (including many Cirque du Soleil alums) create beyond corporate circus’ institutional guardrails.
The resulting acts are stranger, sexier and occasionally sublime — the oddball effervescing of a city’s top performers at play. One summertime evening in the church’s outdoor garden, I watched acrobats scale a scaffold propped against the stone walls of the church, then plummet; a driving soundtrack of ’80s metal gave their daring a rock-and-roll edge. Through a dizzying set featuring the Cyr wheel — a giant Hula-Hoop-like ring that can spin gyroscopically — I held my breath in real apprehension.
The small-stage experience has its quirks. Sometimes MCs offer bilingual patter in French and English. On other nights it’s French-only. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to find out in advance. But at Le Monastère I also invariably find moments of awe — at virtuosity leavened by humor, at intermingled athleticism and grace, at the exuberantly subversive power of circus.
Victorian Vibes
Westmount Public Library and Conservatory, 4574 and 4624 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, westmount.org/en
As a kid growing up in Montréal, I practically lived in Westmount Park: exploring, riding bikes, splashing in the definitely-not-for-swimming lagoon. On summer Saturdays I’d count a dozen wedding parties vying for the best photo spots. The 26-acre green space just west of downtown isn’t as famous as Mount Royal Park, but it’s lovely. There’s a giant clock made of flowers, picturesque walks and all the normal kinds of recreational options, from the free winter skating rink to the playground. But two of its best indoor features — its library and conservatory — have always felt like a cozy Victorian bubble within a bustling modern city.
Westmount Public Library, one of the oldest libraries in Canada, was founded to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The red brick building, designed by Scottish-born architect du jour Robert Findlay, has a round tower and a stone archway over its entrance, accompanied by Arts and Crafts-era friezes celebrating literature. Inside, plasterwork-topped columns, more archways and a coffered ceiling frame a reading room lit by leaded windows emblazoned with the names of philosophers and artists. Though the institution has seen many modern additions and updates, including an excellent children’s section, a makerspace and even a seed lending library, if your dream is to unwind with a good book in a leather armchair where Leonard Cohen once did his homework, this is your spot.
Tucked away next to the library and accessible from it, the Westmount Conservatory is, in contrast, the park’s sparkly jewel. Under its peaked glass roofs, paths wind around displays of lush tropical plants, an original 1920s tiled pool and a fountain. A recent renovation added ramps and benches where visitors can sit and contemplate the flowers and water features. When you’re done with the messy or cold outside world, step inside to experience a moment of warmth and calm.
Final Destination
Mount Royal Cemetery, 1297 chemin de la Fôret
Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery, 1250 chemin de la Fôret
I was new to Montréal in 2021 when I came across the Mount Royal Cemetery by a happy accident. Pandemic-era restrictions still reigned; Mount Royal provided a much-needed reprieve from my apartment, and I delighted in every fresh turn of its trails. Hidden in a quiet section of the park, on the northern slope of the mountain, the cemetery’s decadent tombstones and crypts are a feast for the eyes.
The 165-acre burial ground, which opened in 1852, is one of the oldest in Montréal. In time, it became a favorite place for a contemplative stroll. It houses the remains of former prime minister Sir John Abbott, the 19th-century travel writer Anna Leonowens — inspiration for The King and I — and Canadian landscape painter Anne Savage, among others. Just steps away is Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery, which was established in the 1860s and contains Leonard Cohen’s grave.
A tangle of walking paths on the mountain leads to the cemetery. When I return to Montréal from my current home, in Vermont, I like to start at the 339-step Grand Staircase of Mount Royal that rises above rue Peel to the Kondiaronk Belvedere — the steep climb yields a panoramic view of downtown. From there, I head southwest toward the Lac aux Castors and use one of several cemetery entrances on chemin Remembrance.
The Mount Royal Cemetery rewards wanderers. Walk northwest across it toward the sculpture garden in the small Tiohtià:ke Otsira’kéhne Park, and you might stumble across the humble turn-of-the century paupers’ grave beneath maple trees that blaze in fall. Or find the elegant headstone of iconic Québécois poet Émile Nelligan. “Ses mâts touchaient l’azur, sur des mers inconnues,” it reads, a line from his celebrated poem “The Ship of Gold.” Her masts reaching azure, she sailed unknown seas.
Reliquary Road Trip
Saint Joseph’s Oratory, 3800 chemin Queen-Mary
When I brought groups of teenagers to Montréal in the aughts, as a dorm counselor at a boarding high school, we would always stop at Saint Joseph’s Oratory, a Catholic pilgrimage site on Mount Royal. I wasn’t trying to make them pray. I brought them to see the view over the city, which is lovely, especially at sunset. And to wander inside and marvel at the massive basilica. It’s the largest church in Canada, big enough to make teenage problems — and adult ones — feel small.
Though the oratory glorifies St. Joseph, father of Jesus, it also honors its founder: André Bessette, known as Brother André, who conceived of the shrine and manifested it into being. The construction took six decades, and he died before it was completed in 1967.
The basilica, with its soaring granite arches, is thoroughly modern; its wooden pews seat 2,400. The lower levels include a museum devoted to Brother André, as well as the dimly lit Votive Chapel, where the faithful light candles and pray to St. Joseph. The flickering candlelight illuminates clusters of canes, crutches and braces along the walls, left behind by those who claim to have been healed by Brother André — now Saint André of Montréal. Pope Benedict canonized him in 2010.
No visit is complete without a stop to see the site’s most sacred relic: Brother André’s heart. Located on a pedestal in a windowless red grotto that resembles a bank vault, it’s sealed in a barely translucent jar — proof that he was human, just like us. It gave us plenty to talk about on the ride home.
Around and Around
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is located on Île Notre-Dame
In early June 2018, I took an impromptu trip to Montréal to find the city overrun and restaurants fully booked. More than 200,000 visitors — sporting red and white for Ferrari, black and silver for Mercedes-AMG, and British racing green for Aston Martin — had descended on the city to watch the annual Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix car race.
More than a decade prior, I’d attended that race, sitting in the cheapest bleachers and cheering for Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher, then the world’s highest-paid athlete, as he navigated the 2.7-mile course 70 times, speeding through its famously tight L’Épingle — the pin — and avoiding collisions with the notorious concrete “Wall of Champions” that had ended his race a few years earlier.
Outside of race weekend, the roads that form Circuit Gilles Villeneuve — named after a Québécois F1 racer who died in a tragic 1982 accident — are simply part of Parc Jean-Drapeau, an urban green space straddling the St. Lawrence River islands Île Notre-Dame (where the track is located) and Île Saint-Hélène (home to the Osheaga music festival and the Biosphère environmental museum). From April through November, pedestrians, in-line skaters and cyclists recreate on the track, portions of which are also thoroughfares for cars heading toward the island’s flower gardens or the Casino de Montréal.
My most recent visit to the circuit was more interactive than the previous two. Crossing the island to start a 146-mile cycling trek between downtown Montréal and the eastern city of Sherbrooke, my sister and I took a detour to race through the chicanes and down the straightaways of Gilles Villeneuve. It was thrilling to see the pit lane and paddock up close and to zoom down the straightaways. We may not have reached the 200 mph that F1 drivers sometimes hit, but it was exhilarating nonetheless.
As we pedaled past the bleacher from which I watched the race 20 years ago, I gave my past self a little wave.
Paint It Red
La Sala Rossa, 4848 boulevard Saint-Laurent, tickets start at CA$10
When I walked into La Sala Rossa for the first time, around summer 2022, I took one look at the vibrant, crimson-colored walls and murmured to myself: “Wow, it’s really red in here.”
I suppose the name should have tipped me off. The show that night was a killer set of hip-hop from Chicago-born rapper R.A.P. Ferreira. Today, the crimson-painted venue with a gold-curtained stage in the historic Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood is among my favorite spots to see live music in the city. During September’s POP Montréal music festival, La Sala Rossa is a central venue swarmed with people; midweek folk performances make the most of the room’s warm, intimate acoustics.
The area is suffused with bohemian cool, too, blending the heritage of Jewish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish immigrant communities that populated it through the years. La Sala Rossa reflects that pedigree. Originally a left-wing Jewish community center that also served as the first home of the École supérieure de ballet du Québec, a world-renowned ballet school and troupe, the second-floor property at 4848 boulevard Saint-Laurent was bought in 1973 by the Centro Social Español, a community center for Montréal’s Spanish immigrants. But it was the owners of the beloved club Casa del Popolo who, in 2001, reimagined the community center as a site for shows too big for their own 60-person venue just across the street.
La Sala Rossa is one of the hippest clubs in a city full of hip clubs, a lush-sounding, 250-person theater with one of the most eclectic calendars you’ll find. Whether it was world-class jazz from Kahil El’Zabar & the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, Inuit throat-singing from Nunavut’s Silla, or local future-folk singer-songwriter Thanya Iyer, I’ve seen the more than 90-year-old room become a cathedral the minute a note was struck.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Secret City | In-the-know Vermonters on the offbeat places they love in Montréal”
This article is part of a travel series on Québec. The province’s destination marketing organization, Alliance de l’industrie touristique du Québec, under the Bonjour Québec brand, is a financial underwriter of the project but has no influence over story selection or content. Find the complete series plus travel tips at sevendaysvt.com/quebec.
This article appears in April 29 • 2026.
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