63 Best Sights in Toronto, Ontario

Serving Toronto's Japanese community and thousands of lovers of Japanese culture, this space features a traditional garden and offers workshops and classes in martial arts, music, visual arts, traditional dance, cooking, and more. Visiting art shows are frequently in rotation, as well as artist talks and movie screenings; there's even a Japanese film festival each June. Plan a visit if checking out the nearby Aga Khan Museum.

Just a 10-minute walk east on the boardwalk from Woodbine Beach, the officially merged stretch of Kew Beach, Scarboro Beach, and Balmy Beach is a bit pebbly and slightly more secluded, making it ideal for those seeking a quiet stroll or a dip in the lake. Look for the historic Leuty Lifeguard Station, which was built in the 1920s. Kayak and stand-up paddleboard rental shops sit along the shore. Amenities: food and drink; lifeguards; parking (fee); toilets. Best for: walking; sunrise; swimming.

Only 10 minutes north of the city, this delightful conservation center has more than 16 km (10 miles) of hiking trails through forest, meadow, and marshland, as well as a Bee Space where kids can see them up close and taste their honey, and an Innovation Trail that demonstrates how technology can reduce our impact on the wild. In the magnificent woods there have been sightings of foxes, coyotes, rabbits, deer, and a wide array of birds. Seasonal events include a spring sugar bush maple syrup festival and a honey harvest festival. To get here, drive 3 km (2 miles) north along Highway 400, exit west at Major Mackenzie Drive, and continue south 1 km (½ mile) on Pine Valley Drive to the gate.

Honoring the memory of the city's first children's librarian, this branch houses the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, which contains over 80,000 items ranging from the 14th century to the present. In addition, the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy includes another 80,000-plus items covering everything from parapsychology to UFOs.

On 100 acres of lovely woodland in Kleinburg, 30 km (19 miles) northwest of downtown, the McMichael's permanent collection consists of more than 6,500 pieces by Canadian artists. The museum holds impressive works by Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, and the Group of Seven landscape painters, as well as their early-20th-century contemporaries. These artists were inspired by the wilderness and sought to capture it in bold, original styles. First Nations art and prints, drawings, and sculpture by Inuit artists are well represented. Strategically placed windows help you appreciate the scenery as you view art that took its inspiration from the vast outdoors. Inside, wood walls and a fireplace set a country mood. Free guided tours are offered from Thursday to Sunday at 12:30, and on Thursday and Friday at 2.

Located in a former industrial building across the street from a working chocolate factory, the MOCA regularly hosts exhibitions from cutting-edge contemporary art stars from Canada and all over the world. The museum still retains some of its ramshackle concrete past, which makes it feel anything but sterile, and the C$10 price makes it one of the more affordable cultural spots in the city. If you get hungry or thirsty, grab a coffee or pastry from local café Forno Cultura in the lobby. 

While this small museum may not pack as big of a punch as the city’s larger arts destinations, it’s a fun spot to bring the kids on a rainy afternoon. The various illusions will mess with everyone's minds, and there's everything from holograms to an anti-gravity room and a rotating room (where it looks like you’re turned upside down). It’s a great spot to snap some photos.

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.

Opened in 1899, and used until 1965 when the new City Hall was built across the street, the old municipal building now operates solely as a courthouse. This imposing building was designed by E. J. Lennox, who was also the architect for Casa Loma and the King Edward Hotel. Note the huge stained-glass window as you enter. The fabulous gargoyles above the front steps were apparently the architect's witty way of mocking certain turn-of-the-20th-century politicians; he also carved his name under the eaves on all four faces of the building. The building has appeared in countless domestic and international TV shows and feature films.

This 1893 Romanesque revival building is often referred to simply as "Queen's Park," after the surrounding grounds. The detail-rich exterior is made of pink Ontario sandstone; inside, the huge, lovely halls echo half a millennium of English architecture. The long hallways are hung with hundreds of oils by Canadian artists, and a permanent space is devoted to rotating works by Indigenous artists. Take a 30-minute-long tour from the lobby (advance registration required) to see the chamber where the 124 MPPs, or members of provincial parliament, meet. It is also possible to watch parliament in session from the public gallery. Statues dot the lawn in front of the building, including one of Queen Victoria and one of Canada's first prime ministers, Sir John A. Macdonald.

It has been called a museum of the 21st century, but it's much more than that—where else can you stroll through a real rain forest and explore the boundaries of the human body? Even the building itself is extraordinary: three linked pavilions float gracefully down the side of a ravine and overflow with exhibits that make science and technology fascinating. The sprawling Weston Family Innovation Centre, rife with hands-on activities, is all about experience and problem solving. Younger visitors learn through play in KidSpark, a space specially designed for children eight and under to enjoy and explore. IMAX films and demonstrations of robotics, electricity, and more take place daily; check the schedule when you arrive.

Toronto’s first sake brewery uses natural Ontario spring water from Muskoka and traditional Japanese techniques to create its award-winning sake under the name IZUMI Brewery. The company has a small tasting bar and retail shop with products made with the sake kasu (the lees, or yeast, leftover from fermentation), such as soaps, salad dressings, and miso soup, as well as ceramics and sake glassware. You can also take a tour of the brewery on weekends to learn about Junmai (pure rice) and Namazake (unpasteurized sake), to find out how sake is made, and to enjoy a guided tasting of four sakes.

This subterranean universe expanded from existing tunnels in the mid-1970s partly to replace the retail services in small buildings that were demolished to make way for the latest skyscrapers and partly to protect office workers from the harsh winter weather. As each major building went up, its developers agreed to connect their underground shopping areas with others and with the subway system. You can walk from beneath Union Station to the Fairmont Royal York hotel, the Toronto-Dominion Centre, First Canadian Place, the Sheraton Centre, The Bay and Eaton Centre, and City Hall without ever seeing the light of day, encountering everything from art exhibitions to buskers (the best are the winners of citywide auditions, who are licensed to perform throughout the subway system). According to Guinness World Records, the PATH is the biggest underground shopping complex in the world. Maps to guide you through the labyrinth are available in many downtown news and convenience stores. Be aware that large sections of the PATH may be closed on weekends when the office buildings are closed. This can cause particular problems for wheelchair users because not all sections of the underground are fully accessible.

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. On Tuesday from mid-May to late October, there's a great farmers' market nearby in Riverdale Park.

The Rogers Centre is home to baseball's Blue Jays and was the world's first stadium with a fully retractable roof. Rogers Communications, the owner of the Blue Jays, bought the stadium, formerly known as the SkyDome, in February 2005 for a mere C$25 million. One way to see the 52,000-seat stadium is to buy tickets for a Blue Jays game or one of many other events and concerts. You can also take a one-hour guided walking tour: the route depends on what's going on at the stadium, so you may find yourself in the middle of the field, in a press box, in the dressing rooms, or, if a roof tour is available, 36 stories above home plate on a catwalk.

The part of Spadina Avenue (pronounced spa-dye-nah) that runs through Chinatown, from Dundas Street to Queen Street, has never been chic. For decades it has housed a collection of inexpensive stores, import-export wholesalers, ethnic food stores, and eateries, including some first-class, plastic-tablecloth Chinese restaurants. Each new wave of immigrants—Jewish, Chinese, Portuguese, East and West Indian, South American—has added its own flavor to the mix. While changes in the neighborhood are heralded by modern bubble-tea shops and traditional northern and southern Chinese cuisine expanding past Cantonese mainstays, the basic bill of fare is still bargains galore: yards of remnants piled high in bins, designer clothes minus the labels, and the occasional rock-and-roll nightspot or late-night greasy spoon. A streetcar line runs down the wide avenue to Front Street.

Bank towers dwarf it now, but this Anglican church with noble Gothic spires has the tallest steeple in Canada. Its illuminated clock once guided ships into the harbor. This is the fourth St. James Cathedral on the site; the third burned down in the Great Fire of 1849. As part of the church's bicentennial in 1997, a peal of 12 bells was installed. Stand near the church most Sundays after the 9 am service ends (about 10:10 am) and you'll be rewarded with a glorious concert of ringing bells.

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.

Built in 1850 on the site of the area's first public meeting space, St. Lawrence Hall is Renaissance revival architecture at its finest. The hall was intended for musical performances and balls, and famed opera soprano Jenny Lind sang here, but it's also the spot where antislavery demonstrations were held, and where P. T. Barnum first presented Tom Thumb. Take time to admire the exterior of this architectural gem, now used for everything from concerts to wedding receptions. If you take part in one of the many walking tours of the area, you'll likely see photos (in the lounge on the third floor) featuring notable figures who performed, lectured, or were entertained here.

Built under the Gardiner Expressway, the Bentway is part of the city's efforts to reclaim public spaces. The sprawling stretch of land houses whimsical art installations, communal dining and picnic spaces, a gloriously smooth paved pathway built for roller-skating and ice-skating (rentals available at C$10) depending on the season, and various community events, festivals, and concerts.

A five-story architectural masterpiece, this glass-paneled building houses the year-round headquarters of the internationally acclaimed Toronto International Film Festival, which takes place in September. Throughout the year visitors can attend film-related lectures, watch screenings, and enjoy smaller film festivals, including the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival, a film festival with free movies for anyone under 25 that takes place in April. A stellar educational program includes summer camps and ongoing workshops—on how to produce a stop-motion movie, for example. The TIFF Cinematheque, open to the public, plays world cinema classics and contemporary art house films.

This park comprises a peninsula that juts 5 km (3 miles) into Lake Ontario. Created from rubble from construction sites around the city and sand dredged for a new port, the peninsula has quickly become one of the best areas in the city for cycling (quad-cycles are available for rent), jogging, walking, photography, and bird-watching. The peninsula is home to the largest breeding colony of double-crested cormorants in North America, as well as dozens of species of terns, ducks, geese, and great egrets. At the end of the spit of land, you'll find a red-and-white lighthouse, in addition to amazing views of downtown and an awesome sense of isolation in nature. Bird-watching is best from May to mid-October. To get here, head east along Queen Street to Leslie Street, then south to the lake. Dogs and private vehicles are not permitted.

These beautiful themed botanical gardens and adjacent estate garden (once owned by industrialist Rupert Edwards) flow into one of the city's most visited ravines. Paths wind along colorful floral displays and exquisite rock gardens, which are incredibly popular with wedding photographers. There's also a signposted "teaching garden" for kids to touch and learn about nature. You can join a free 90-minute tour between May and early September, on most days except Mondays and Wednesdays; check online for times. Refreshments and baked goods are available on-site at the Bloom Cafe. The parking lot can get very busy on weekends in spring and autumn. For a long nature walk, head south through Wilket Creek Park and the winding Don Valley. After hours of walking (or biking or jogging) through almost uninterrupted parkland, you reach the southern tip of Taylor Creek Park on Victoria Park Avenue, just north of the Danforth—here you can catch a subway.

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 new 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.

With terrain ranging from river valley to dense forest, the Rouge Valley was an inspired choice of site for this 710-acre zoo in which 5,000 different mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish are grouped according to their natural habitats, in both indoor and outdoor enclosures. Daily activities might include chats with zookeepers and animal demonstrations. A visit takes at least three hours and includes the Africa, Americas, Australasia, Indo-Malaya, and Canadian Domain pavilions. In the spring and summer, the Zoomobile can take you through the outdoor exhibit area. The African Savanna is a fantastic walking safari; a dynamic reproduction that brings rare and beautiful animals and distinctive geological landscapes to the city's doorstep. Reserve ahead for a behind-the-scenes tour or to camp overnight in the Serengeti Bush Camp.

This small working post office dates from 1833 and still functions with quill pens, ink pots, and sealing wax—you can use the old-fashioned equipment to send a letter for C$5 plus postage stamp. Exhibits include reproductions of letters from the 1830s. Distinctive cancellation stamps are used on all outgoing letters.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a virtuoso of modern architecture, designed a significant portion of this six-building office complex, though he died before its completion in 1992. As with his acclaimed Seagram Building in New York, Mies stripped the TD Centre's buildings to their skin and bones of bronze-color glass and black-metal I-beams. The tallest building, the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower, is 56 stories high. The only architectural decoration consists of geometric repetition. Inside the low-rise square banking pavilion at King and Bay Streets is a virtually intact Mies interior.

Bellwoods is the top destination for west-enders to kick back on a sunny day. The tree-lined park runs between Dundas West and Queen West, which makes for a scenic stroll if you're heading between neighborhoods. It's a great spot for picnicking and people-watching---or dog-watching, if you take a bench next to the dog bowl. It's especially attractive in mid-May, when the cherry trees bloom pink, or when the leaves turn in the fall.

Historian Pierre Berton wrote that the planning of Union Station recalled "the love lavished on medieval churches." Indeed, this train depot can be regarded as a cathedral built to serve the god of steam. Designed in 1907 and opened by Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1927, it has a 40-foot-high coffered Guastavino tile ceiling and 22 pillars weighing 70 tons apiece. The floors are Tennessee marble laid in a herringbone pattern (the same that's in Grand Central Terminal in New York City). The main hall, with its lengthy concourse and light flooding in from arched windows at each end, was designed to evoke the majesty of the country that spread out by rail from this spot. The names of the towns and cities across Canada that were served by the country's two railway lines, Grand Trunk (incorporated into today's Canadian National) and Canadian Pacific, are inscribed on a frieze along the inside of the hall. As train travel declined, the building was nearly demolished in the 1970s, but public opposition proved strong enough to save it, and Union Station, a National Historic Site of Canada, is now a vital transport hub. Commuter, subway, and long-distance trains stop here.

Almost a city unto itself, the University of Toronto's student and staff population numbers well over 100,000. The institution dates to 1827, when King George IV signed a charter for a "King's College in the Town of York, Capital of Upper Canada." The Church of England had control then, but by 1850 the college was proclaimed nondenominational, renamed the University of Toronto, and put under the control of the province. Then, in a spirit of Christian competition, the Anglicans started Trinity College, the Methodists began Victoria, and the Roman Catholics began St. Michael's; by the time the Presbyterians founded Knox College, the University was changing at a great rate. Now the 12 schools and faculties are united and accept students from all over the world. The architecture is interesting, if uneven, as one might expect on a campus that's been built in bits and pieces over 150 years.