Downtown

Sainte-Catherine was Montreal's commercial artery for over a century and still is, despite the endless construction and the empty storefronts nobody bothers to hide. The stretch between **Guy and Saint-Laurent** holds all of it: the historic department stores, underground city entrances every hundred metres, the Crescent Street terraces a block off, then the Quartier des Spectacles taking over eastward. It is loud, uneven, never pretty, and it is the one place where suburban shoppers, Concordia students and office workers all cross paths. The street walks end to end in half an hour, or in segments depending on what you want. Insider tip: shift one street north to De Maisonneuve the moment the crowd turns tiring.

Some of Montreal's best nights don't start with a plan. Wander through the Quartier des Spectacles or the Plateau and let the music guide your steps: in the city that hosts the **world's largest jazz festival**, the blue note spills out of the venues all year round. Between the outdoor stages of Place des Festivals, late-night jam sessions and bars where the horns echo onto the sidewalk, you almost always end up stumbling on an unexpected performance, sometimes a McGill student quartet, sometimes a scene veteran dropping in for a jam. Entry is often free or close to it, and the atmosphere can't be reserved anyway. Insider tip: the best discoveries come after 9 p.m., when guest musicians take the stage unannounced.

Montreal hides a second city beneath the first: the RESO, more than **30 kilometres** of corridors, galleries and indoor plazas linking metro stations, shopping centres, universities, museums and office towers. The game is best played on a snowstorm day: enter at Place Ville Marie, set yourself a destination (the Palais des congrès and its multicoloured glass wall, say) and try to get there without ever stepping outside. Along the way you'll pass hidden food courts, pop-up exhibitions, indoor fountains and thousands of Montrealers practising this winter sport without even thinking about it. Born in 1962 beneath Place Ville Marie, the network has become the **largest underground complex in the world**. Insider tip: the corridors under the Quartier international, between the World Trade Centre and the Palais des congrès, are the most beautiful and least crowded in the network.

No Bell Centre ticket needed: on game nights, all of Montreal becomes an arena. The ritual starts an hour before puck drop. Put on whatever bleu-blanc-rouge you own, find a sports bar where screens paper the walls, and order a pint while gauging the room's mood. At the first goal, strangers high-five; at the first questionable penalty, the whole room contests the refereeing with parliamentary fervour. The Canadiens, founded in **1909**, are the oldest franchise in the NHL and a local religion transmitted without baptism: just be there, shout at the right moment, and understand that "Go Habs Go" is chanted without an accent. Insider tip: on playoff nights, hit the bars around the Bell Centre an hour early, after that, it's standing room or nothing.