The Underground City, officially RÉSO, is some thirty-two kilometres of connected passages beneath central Montreal. Useful in winter, though the department store that anchored it has closed.
The Botanical Garden, Insectarium and Biodôme sit together in the east of the city as part of Espace pour la vie. Two of the three have been rebuilt since 2018, and the Insectarium was replaced outright.
Four Montreal museums worth a visitor's time: the Museum of Fine Arts, Pointe-à-Callière over the city's founding site, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Montréal Science Centre.
Mount Royal is the hill the city is named after, carrying a park of some 200 hectares designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The illuminated cross is currently dark, with relighting expected in autumn 2027.
Old Montreal holds the old streets and squares and the Old Port along the waterfront, with the Lachine Canal running off its western edge. Permanent settlement dates from 1642 rather than 1611.
Saint Joseph's Oratory is the largest church in Canada, built at the urging of the lay brother canonised in 2010 as Saint André Bessette. The cross on its dome is the highest point in Montreal.
The Lachine Canal was cut to bypass the Lachine Rapids, not to reach the Ottawa River. Obsolete from 1959 but open until 1970, its towpath is now the best urban cycle route in Montreal.
The largest reservoir in the United States fell to its lowest level since it first filled, in August 2026. The elevations at which the Hoover Dam stops generating, what the shoreline looks like now, and why the Colorado River rules are being rewritten.
The venues outlast the shops in them: the Forum Shops, the Grand Canal Shoppes and the Miracle Mile — which was Desert Passage until 2007 — plus the thing most British shoppers get wrong, which is that there is no VAT refund.
Real Mojave Desert twenty minutes from the Strip — and from October to May the scenic drive now requires a timed-entry reservation booked in advance, without which visitors are turned away at the gate.
The original Las Vegas, pedestrianised since 1995 — with a canopy screen entirely replaced in 2019, a neon cowgirl that moved indoors in 2016, and Circa, the first ground-up casino downtown since 1980.