10 Best Sights in Yorkville, Church and Wellesley, Rosedale, and Cabbagetown, Toronto

The ROM (as the Royal Ontario Museum is known to locals) opened in 1914, is Canada's largest museum, and has a reputation for making its science, art, and archaeology exhibits accessible and appealing. The architecture of the gigantic complex, which includes the ultramodern Michael Lee-Chin Crystal gallery—a series of interlocking prismatic shapes spilling out onto Bloor Street—helps exemplify this.

Inside the museum, the Daphne Cockwell Gallery of Canada showcases an impressive collection of First Peoples objects and artifacts, spanning from pre-contact times to the present. The Matthews Family Court of Chinese Sculpture features monumental Buddhist sculptures dating from 200 BC to 1900, while the Gallery of Korea presents over 260 artifacts of Korean art and cultural heritage.

In February 2024, the museum launched its bold OpenROM revitalization, with plans for a redesigned entrance with a dramatic canopy, a grand four-story atrium, new gallery space, a showcase water feature, and a multilevel "lilypad" staircase. Once complete in 2027, OpenROM will offer permanent free access to the museum’s main floor.  "Plan Ahead Pricing" offers ticket savings when booked in advance. Third Tuesday nights are free. 

Allan Gardens has been a green oasis in Toronto for well over a century. A domed indoor botanical garden and arboretum, the conservatory is filled with plant, flower, and tree species from around the world, preserved and cultivated in six different climate zones. If you're a nature lover you can easily spend hours among the succulents, vines, orchids, hibiscus, and weeping willows, and all for free.

This pocket-size park is pleasant enough during the day, but at night it comes alive with strings of rainbow-color lights that symbolize the LGBTQIA+ community. There's a mural of gay history on an adjacent building, and tucked away in one corner is the Toronto AIDS Memorial.

Located within Toronto's ravine system and centered around a repurposed century-old industrial brick factory, this sustainable public space/social enterprise/nature preserve can be hard to categorize but offers plenty of unique experiences in one place. It offers beautiful trails, lookouts and wildlife (including well-loved snapping turtles), food and music in the summer, a public skating rink in the winter, and one of the city's favorite farmers' markets on Saturday year-round. There's also lots of public art and children's educational programming.

Dedicated to the art of clay and ceramics, this museum has more than 4,000 pieces in its permanent collection, from 17th-century English delftware and 18th-century European porcelain to Japanese Kakiemon-style pottery and Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. If your visit coincides with lunchtime, hit on-site bistro Clay for creative, locally oriented cuisine (and one of the best hidden patios in town). Admission is pay what you can, but there is a suggested donation amount.  Admission is free on Wednesday after 4; kids under 18, students, and Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) are always free.

This nonsectarian burial ground, established in 1850, is the final resting place for many of Toronto's pioneers, including prominent turn-of-the-century Black Canadian doctors, businessmen, and politicians. The cemetery's chapel, gate, and gatehouse date from 1872; the buildings constitute one of the most attractive groupings of small Victorian-era structures in Toronto.

This spot once hosted the city's main zoo, but it's now home to a rural community representative of a late 19th-century farm. Permanent residents include horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs, donkeys, ducks, geese, and chickens. While it's not a petting zoo per se, kids get a real kick out of watching farmers go about their daily chores, which include feeding and bathing the animals. The adjacent playground has a wading pool. The nearby Riverdale Park offers some of the best skyline views in the city.

At the northeast corner of Parliament and Wellesley Streets, this cemetery contains interesting burial monuments of many prominent politicians, business leaders, and families in Toronto. The small yellow-brick Gothic Chapel of St. James-the-Less has a handsome spire rising from the church nave and was built in 1861. This National Historical Site is one of the most beautiful churches in the country.

Designed by one of Canada's most admired architects, Raymond Moriyama, who also created the Ontario Science Centre, this five-story library is arranged around a large atrium, which gives a wonderful sense of open space. One-third of the more than 6.2 million items—spread across 82 km (51 miles) of shelves—are open to the public. Audio carrels are available for listening to nearly 40,000 music and spoken-word recordings. There's an impressively large performing arts collection, and, lest you think libraries have to be quiet, listening stations and piano rooms are on the fifth floor—as is the Arthur Conan Doyle Room, which is of special interest to Baker Street fans. It houses the world's finest public collection of Holmesiana, including records, films, photos, books, manuscripts, letters, and even cartoon books starring Sherlock Hemlock of Sesame Street. The fourth-floor Jack Rabinovitch Reading Room opened in 2022, with collections from the man who founded Canada's most prestigious literary award, the Giller Prize.

Yorkville is also home to a unique park on Cumberland Street, right outside Bay subway station, designed as a series of gardens along old property lines and reflecting both the history of the Village of Yorkville and the diversity of the Canadian landscape. The result of an international design competition, the park lines the street with a soothing waterfall fixture, tree-lined enclaves, and a big rock sculpture that children love to climb on. It's rare to find that kind of open public space in a retail area in the city that doesn't require you to buy something, though the ample outdoor seating often looks like a shared open-air café for nearby shops like Starbucks, Nutbar, and vegan lunch spot Kupfert & Kim.