Toronto

Toronto spreads along the north shore of Lake Ontario: glass towers and the CN Tower downtown, leafy streets of brick houses around them, wooded ravines running through the neighborhoods and a string of car-free islands just offshore. Nearly half of its people were born outside Canada, and you can taste it everywhere, from Chinatown and Little Italy to Greektown and Koreatown. It is an easy city to get around, by streetcar, by subway and on foot.

This guide covers when to go, where to stay, what to see, a walk through Cabbagetown to the Don Valley, a day on the Toronto Islands, what to eat, and the history, art and customs that make the city make sense.

1. 01

   The CN Tower

   At 553 meters, it was the tallest free-standing structure in the world for more than thirty years after it opened in 1976. Elevators climb to the LookOut level and the glass floor at 342 meters, the SkyPod sits higher still at 447 meters, and on a clear day you look straight across Lake Ontario.

   Go near sunset, or book the EdgeWalk to circle the outside of the main pod in a harness, 356 meters up.

   Photo: Arturo Pardavila III from Hoboken, NJ, USA, CC BY 2.0
2. 02

   The Royal Ontario Museum

   Canada’s largest museum of world cultures and natural history, opened in 1914: dinosaur halls, Egyptian mummies, a Chinese tomb of the Ming era and galleries of Canadian and Indigenous art. Daniel Libeskind’s Crystal, a burst of glass and metal shards over Bloor Street, was added in 2007.

   Free on the third Tuesday evening of each month; tickets are released two weeks ahead.

   Photo: fw_gadget, CC BY-SA 2.0
3. 03

   The Art Gallery of Ontario

   Frank Gehry, who grew up a few blocks away, rebuilt the gallery in 2008, with a long gallery of Douglas fir and glass along Dundas Street and a blue titanium wing at the back. Inside hang Canadian painters from Tom Thomson to Emily Carr, Rubens’ The Massacre of the Innocents and the largest public collection of Henry Moore’s sculpture.

   Closed on Mondays. Free on the first Wednesday evening of each month, with tickets booked ahead.

   Photo: Jeff Hitchcock from Seattle, WA, USA, CC BY 2.0
4. 04

   St. Lawrence Market

   A market has stood on this site since 1803. The South Market, built around the hall that served as the city hall from 1845 to 1899, is packed with butchers, fishmongers, cheese counters and bakeries; across Front Street, the new North Market opened in 2025 and holds the Saturday farmers’ market from 5am.

   The South Market is closed on Mondays. Have a peameal bacon sandwich at Carousel Bakery.

   Photo: Canmenwalker, CC BY 4.0
5. 05

   The Distillery District

   Gooderham and Worts began with a windmill by the lake in 1832 and grew into the largest distillery in the British Empire. More than 40 of its Victorian brick buildings, on brick-paved lanes closed to cars, now hold galleries, cafés, theaters and shops.

   From mid-November to early January the Winter Village fills the lanes: free by day, with paid tickets for evenings at busy times.

   Photo: Canmenwalker, CC BY 4.0
6. 06

   Kensington Market

   A tangle of narrow streets west of Spadina where Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe sold from pushcarts and front rooms in the early 1900s, followed by Portuguese, Caribbean, Latin American and Asian families. Today it is vintage clothing, cafés, bakeries, spice shops and cheap eats, and a National Historic Site since 2006.

   On Pedestrian Sundays, once a month from May to October, the streets close to cars for music and stalls.

   Photo: Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 4.0
7. 07

   Casa Loma

   A castle on the hill above midtown, built from 1911 to 1914 by the architect E. J. Lennox for Sir Henry Pellatt, a financier who made his fortune in electric power. It has towers, a conservatory, two secret passages in Pellatt’s office and a 243-meter tunnel to the stables. He lived in it only until 1923, when money troubles forced him out.

   Open every day. Climb the towers for the view over the city, and walk the gardens in summer.

   Photo: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
8. 08

   Fort York

   The garrison where Toronto began in 1793, taken by the Americans in 1813 and rebuilt soon after. It holds the largest collection of buildings from the War of 1812 in Canada, blockhouses, barracks and a stone powder magazine inside earthen walls, and from late June to August the Fort York Guard drills and fires muskets on the parade ground.

   Free, open Wednesday to Sunday. It sits under the Gardiner Expressway, west of Bathurst Street.

   Photo: Secondarywaltz, CC BY-SA 3.0

Three hidden gems

Pick the neighborhood first, then the hotel. Each link opens a map of places to stay around it.

Hotel links go to Stay22. If you book, we may earn a commission, at no cost to you.

Toronto eats from every corner of the world, often in restaurants run by the families who brought the recipes, and it has a few dishes of its own, from the peameal bacon sandwich to the butter tart. Weekend brunch is a ritual, and dinner starts earlier than in Europe, from about 6 to 8pm.

Peameal bacon sandwich

Lean pork loin, cured, rolled in cornmeal, grilled and piled on a soft bun with mustard. The pork packers who gave the city its old nickname, Hogtown, first rolled it in ground yellow peas; Carousel Bakery in St. Lawrence Market is the classic place to eat one.

Photo: Leventio, CC BY-SA 4.0

Butter tart

A small pastry shell filled with butter, sugar and egg that sets soft or stays runny, an Ontario favorite. Raisins or no raisins is a serious argument.

Photo: Rob Campbell from Toronto, ON, Canada, CC BY 2.0

Poutine

Fries, squeaky cheese curds and hot gravy, from Quebec but sold all over the city, often late at night.

Photo: Antonydstevens, CC0

Jamaican patty

Flaky golden pastry around spiced beef, chicken or vegetables, sold in Caribbean bakeries and corner stores, sometimes tucked inside soft coco bread.

Photo: stu_spivack, CC BY-SA 2.0

Roti

From the city’s Caribbean shops: a soft flatbread wrapped around curried chicken, goat, or potato and chickpeas.

Photo: Geo Swan from Toronto, Canada, CC0

Dim sum

Dumplings, buns and rolls from carts or menus, busiest at weekend lunch in Chinatown or in the suburbs of Markham and Richmond Hill.

Photo: andrewarchy from Toronto, Canada, CC BY 2.0

Souvlaki on the Danforth

Grilled skewers of pork or chicken with pita, potatoes and tzatziki in the Greek restaurants along Danforth Avenue.

Eat breakfast at St. Lawrence Market, dim sum and noodles in Chinatown on Spadina, everything from empanadas to Jamaican patties in Kensington Market, Greek on the Danforth, Italian on College Street, Korean on Bloor Street and South Asian on Gerrard Street East. For Cantonese and Hong Kong-style restaurants, many locals drive out to Markham and Richmond Hill.

Isabella Valancy Crawford

1850 to 1887

Born in Dublin and raised in Ontario, Crawford lived in Toronto with her widowed mother from about 1883, in rooms on Adelaide Street and then on John Street at King, earning her living with verse for the Toronto papers and serial stories for New York magazines. In 1884 she paid to print Old Spookses’ Pass, Malcolm’s Katie, and Other Poems; reviewers praised it and few bought it. She died in 1887, at 36, and is now read as one of Canada’s first major poets.

Ernest Hemingway

1899 to 1961

Hemingway first came to Toronto in 1920 and sold his first pieces to the Toronto Star Weekly. After two years reporting from Europe for the Star, he came back in 1923 as a staff reporter and lived in an apartment on Bathurst Street, where he and his wife brought home their first son, born in a Toronto hospital that October. He quit at the end of the year and went back to Paris.

Margaret Atwood

born 1939

In Cat’s Eye (1988), a painter returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her work and remembers growing up in the city of the 1940s and 1950s, and The Robber Bride (1993) follows three women through the Toronto of its own day.

Michael Ondaatje

born 1943

In the Skin of a Lion (1987) tells the story of the immigrant workers who built the city in the early 1900s, above all the Prince Edward Viaduct across the Don Valley and the R. C. Harris water treatment plant by the lake. Two of its characters reappear in The English Patient (1992).

I stand within the stony, arid town,

I gaze for ever on the narrow street;

I hear for ever passing up and down,

The ceaseless tramp of feet.

Isabella Valancy Crawford, The City Tree, from Old Spookses’ Pass, Malcolm’s Katie, and Other Poems (Toronto, 1884)