Toronto Sights

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Toronto's urban core

see Downtown district article for more possibilities & further information:

• Art Gallery of Ontario, www.ago.net. Tue, Thu-Sat 10 AM - 5:30 PM, Wed 10 AM - 8:30 PM (free admission after 6 PM), closed Mon. The largest art gallery in Canada, recently redesigned by architect Frank Gehry. It has a great Canadian paintings exhibit and the world's largest collection of Henry Moore sculptures. The European paintings exhibit has a few excellent pieces and it has one of the world's most expensive paintings on view (Ruben's The Massacre of the Innocents). Adults $18, seniors $15, students and youth $10, children free.

The Royal Ontario Museum

• Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park Toronto, ON M5S 2C6, ☎ 416.586.8000, www.rom.on.ca. One of the better and larger museums in North America. The original building was built in 1910, and is a handsome romanesque revival, with many carvings of people and events. the newer addition is a large deconstructivist crystal, made of steel and glass. Thousands of artifacts, and specimens, are featured in over 20 exhibits; including Dinosaurs, Ancient China, Native Canadians, Canadian Furniture, Medieval Europe, Art Deco,Ancient Egypt, Textiles, Middle East, India, and Pacific Islanders. the world's largest totem pole, which is over 100 years old, is also housed in a place of honour.

• Ontario Science Centre www.ontariosciencecentre.com— Lots of hands on science exhibits, including a rainforest, a tornado machine, sound proof tunnel, balance testing machines, and more. It also contains Ontario's only Omnimax (full wrap around) movie theatre.

• Bata Shoe Museum, 327 Bloor Street West, in downtown Toronto., www.batashoemuseum.ca. Monday-Saturday 10AM-5PM, Sunday 12 noon-5PM. Adults $12, Seniors $10, Every Thursday evening between 5PM and 8PM, admission is Pay-what-you-can, with a suggested donation of $5 (March 2008). This offbeat museum is devoted to shoes and footwear, and contains Napoleon Bonaparte's socks, and footwear from cultures all over the world

Entrance of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE)

• Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) www.theex.com— Annual agricultural exhibition that is Canada's largest fair and the fifth largest in North America, with an average annual attendance of 1.3 million.

• CN Tower www.cntower.ca— The tallest free standing structure, at over 500 meters tall, in North America. You can ride a glass elevator to the top. The view is incredible and there is a glass floor, which for some is very scary to walk on. There is also a revolving restaurant which offers spectacular views as the sun sets over the city.

• Casa Loma, 1 Austin Terrace (at the corner of Davenport Rd. and Spadina Rd), ☎ ''+1 (416)'' 923 - 1171 (info@casaloma.org, fax: ''+1 (416)'' 923 - 5734), www.casaloma.org. 9.30am to 5pm, May to October. Visit Casa Loma and step back in time to a period of European elegance and splendour. The museum is the former home of Canadian financier Sir Henry Pellatt complete with decorated suites, secret passages, an 800-foot tunnel, towers, stables, and beautiful 5-acre estate gardens. A self-guided digital audio tour in 8 languages (English, French, Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, Mandarin and Korean) is available. CAD 18.

Casa Loma

• Spadina House - A historic mansion dating from the 1860s, the grounds contain a beautiful garden, which is free to walk around in. If you want to view the historic interior, you need to pay.

• Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art www.gardinermuseum.on.ca— Dedicated to ceramics in an exquisite contemporary building right across from the Royal Ontario Museum - from Ancient to Contemporary with an extraordinary European collection.

• Hockey Hall of Fame www.hhof.com— Dedicated to the history of ice hockey, it is both a museum and a hall of fame. it is housed in the historic Bank of Montreal building, dating from the 1880s.

• Black Creek Pioneer Village, 1000 Murray Ross Parkway, M3J 2P3, Toronto, ON (One set of lights east of Jane Street, on the South side of Steeles Avenue (follow the Village signs). TTC: Bus Steeles 60 West route from Finch subway station or Jane 35 route from Jane subway station. YRT: From the York University Terminal take the Route 10 (Woodbridge) bus or the Route 20 (Jane-Concord) bus to Jane Street & Steeles Avenue. From the Vaughan Mills terminal take the Route 20 (Jane-Concord) bus to Jane Street & Steeles Avenue.), ☎ 416-667-6295, www.blackcreek.ca. Historic site in northern part of Toronto, just west of York University and southeast of the Jane and Steeles intersection. It overlooks Black Creek, a tributary of the Humber River. The village is a recreation of life in 19th-century Ontario and consists of over forty historic 19th century buildings, decorated in the style of the 1860s with period furnishings and actors portraying villagers. The village is populated with ducks, horses, sheep, and other livestock and is self-explored, although many of the individual sites will have a guide inside to explain details of the structure. Visiting in the fall, after the summer, is a great way to see the village, as weekdays will see the facility almost empty of other visitors.

• Ontario Place www.ontarioplace.com— A great place to take the kids in summer with an Imax theater inside.

Toronto City Hall at night

• Toronto City Hall— Two buildings forming a semi-circle overlooking Nathan Phillips square, which has a very popular skating rink in the winter. Architecturally stunning, and next door to Old City Hall (currently the court house)which has a more classical architecture.

• Toronto Zoo www.torontozoo.com— A world-class facility, the Toronto Zoo is best accessed by car or GO Transit + TTC bus as a day-trip as it is located at the eastern reaches of the city. The zoo is divided into zones (such as Africa, South America, and North America) and features both indoor and outdoor displays. Open daily except for Christmas Day, and worth a visit in both the winter and summer months.

• Toronto Aerospace Museum, Parc Downsview Park, 65 Carl Hall Road, Box 1, Toronto, ON, M3K 2E1 (From Downsview subway station bus route 101, 108 Downsview, the 86 Sheppard West, Westbound or the 84 Sheppard West, Westbound. From Sheppard subway station, bus route 86 Sheppard West), ☎ (416) 638-6078 (tam@bellnet.ca, fax: (416) 638-5509), torontoaerospacemuseum.com/home.html. Wednesday, 10:00AM - 8:00PM, Thursday - Saturday, 10:00AM - 4:00PM, Sunday, 10:00AM - 4:00PM, Holiday Mondays, 10:00AM - 4:00PM.. The Toronto Aerospace Museum (TAM) is dedicated to developing an exciting educational, heritage and tourist attraction at Parc Downsview Park, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1997, we are an important year-round attraction within Parc Downsview Park, Canada’s first urban national park. The TAM is in a building that isn’t just full of history, but is part of history from the days of fabric and wire biplanes of the 1920’s to the dawn of the space age and Canada’s first satellite, launched in 1962. This historic building at Downsview is the original 1929 home of de Havilland Aircraft of Canada Ltd., one of Canada’s most successful aircraft manufacturers.

CN Tower as viewed from Rogers Centre.

• McMichael Canadian Art Collection www.mcmichael.com— Renowned for its devotion to collecting and exhibiting only Canadian art, the McMichael permanent collection consists of almost 6,000 artworks by Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, their contemporaries, and First Nations, Inuit and other artists who have made a contribution to Canada’s artistic heritage. The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is the only major public art gallery devoted solely to the collecting and exhibiting of Canadian art. The gallery offers visitors the unique opportunity to enjoy Canadian landscape paintings in the woodland setting that inspired them.

• Rogers Centre www.rogerscentre.com/contactus— Rogers Centre, formerly known as SkyDome, is a multi-purpose stadium in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated next to the CN Tower near the shores of Lake Ontario. Originally opened in 1989, it is home to the American League's Toronto Blue Jays, the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts, the site of the annual International Bowl American college football bowl game, and as of 2008, the National Football League's Buffalo Bills' second playing venue in the Bills Toronto Series. While it is primarily a sports venue, it also hosts other large-scale events such as conventions, trade fairs, concerts, funfairs, and monster truck shows. The stadium was renamed "Rogers Centre" following the purchase of the stadium by Rogers Communications in 2005.

The venue was noted for being the first stadium to have a fully-retractable motorized roof, as well as for the 348-room hotel attached to it, with 70 rooms overlooking the field. It is also the most recent North American major-league stadium built to accommodate both football, as well as baseball, although some of the newer baseball parks have been known to host the occasional college football game, such as AT&T Park, Chase Field, and Safeco Field.

Soon after its opening, the stadium became a popular venue for large scale rock concerts and is the largest indoor concert venue in Toronto; it has hosted many international acts including Metallica, Madonna, U2, Depeche Mode, The Rolling Stones, The Three Tenors, Radiohead, Simon & Garfunkel, Garth Brooks, Backstreet Boys, Roger Waters, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Limp Bizkit, Eminem, Janet Jackson, Avril Lavigne, Jonas Brothers, and Cher, the latter for the Halloween extravaganza in 2003. Michael W. Smith and N'Sync also performed in the Rogers Centre.

The stadium will be the centrepiece of the 2015 Pan American Games as the site of the opening and closing ceremonies.

Panoramic view of Blue Jays game with open roof.