Downtown and Chinatown

Rue Ste-Catherine—and the Métro line that runs under it—is the main cord that binds together the disparate, sprawling neighborhoods that comprise Montréal's downtown, or centre-ville. It's a long, boisterous, sometimes seedy, and sometimes elegant street that runs from rue Claremont in Westmount to rue d'Iberville in the east end. The downtown stretch—usually clogged with traffic and lined with department stores, boutiques, bars, restaurants, strip clubs, amusement arcades, and even a few churches—is considerably shorter, running from avenue Atwater to boulevard St-Laurent, where downtown morphs into the Latin Quarter and the Village, the center of Montréal's gay and lesbian community.