Montréal Places

The Plateau and Environs

Plateau Mont-Royal—or simply the Plateau as it's more commonly called these days—is still home to a vibrant Portuguese community, but much of the housing originally built for factory workers has been bought and renovated by professionals, artists, performers, and academics eager to find a place to live close to all the action. The Plateau is always bustling, even in the dead of winter, but on sunny summer weekends it's packed with Montrealers who come here to shop, dine, and watch each other.

The gentrification of the Plateau has pushed up rents and driven students, immigrant families, and single young graduates farther north, following the main thoroughfares of boulevard St-Laurent as well St-Denis. Above the Plateau and next to Mont-Royal, the Francophone neighborhood of Outremont was established, and the eastern fringes of Outremont are home to Montréal's thriving Hasidic community.

Bordering Outremont is the funky neighborhood of Mile End, an old working-class district that is now full of inexpensive restaurants and little shops selling handicrafts and secondhand clothes. Farther north is Little Italy, which is still home base to Montréal's sizable Italian community. Families of Italian descent live all over the greater Montréal area now, but many come back here every week or so to shop, eat out, or visit family and friends.

Many of the older residences in these neighborhoods have the graceful wrought-iron balconies and twisting staircases that are typical of Montréal. The stairs and balconies, treacherous in winter, are often full of families and couples gossiping, picnicking, and partying come summer. If Montrealers tell you they spend the summer in Balconville, they mean they don't have the money or the time to leave town and won't get any farther than their balconies.