Montreal – a painted city
Spending days in a city with no one but the city herself for company goes something like this: wake up, breakfast, pick place on map, and start walking. Fortunately Montreal is a very walkable city.
First thing that struck me was how I’d ended up, again, in Hackney. When I went to see a friend in Barcelona for New Year’s several years ago we stayed in Raval, a down-at-heel barrio filled with Turks and recent immigrants and frequented by the usual low-rent arty types that find themselves in such places. Kebab shops, gyros, bars and haircuts – like Hackney. Then in Madrid, we stayed in Lavapiés, and found it much the same. Now my international tour of Hackney has crossed the Atlantic.
My hotel is on the edge of the Quartier de Specatacles, the museum, art gallery and theatre pedestrianised district east of downtown. Immediately around me is the Latin Quarter, whose latino qualities are either very deeply buried or non-existent, as it is mostly made of restaurants, cafes and bars and shops more reminiscent of Camden. It even has a community of crusty punks that sit around surreptitiously drinking and panhandling by the roadside. To the north, up slight hill is the Plateau, west is the gay village.
A stroll around on my first day led down Rue St Catherine, an artery that runs through the city for miles. New building sites, cheap eateries, the occasional strip club, grungy bars, art supply shops, galleries, coffee shops and graffiti everywhere left me in no doubt that this meant chalking up another international Hackney stop-off.
At the end of my road is a small square, Place Emilie Gamelin. It has a sloped grassy bank running down to a concrete plaza on which is marked out three checkered boards for playing giant chess. There is a water feature that wells up into three tree-like metal twists atop the hill, and then flows down a channel to a covered gutter at the bottom. Standing at the outflow at the bottom I thought how pleasant it was; the sun shining, the thoughtful men standing around the four-foot high rooks and pawns, chin-in-hand, the music playing from speakers mounted on high poles. I looked at my feet and saw a syringe tumble out of the water channel and bobble around the gutter. Druggies? Urban regeneration? Works of public contemporary art? All very familiar.
Unlike Hackney, however, Montreal is covered in graffiti of a very high standard. No so much grafitti as murals, in fact. Each of the two or three parts of town I’ve been to have a different flavour, some more serene, others more urban, but the quality – and the fact that none have been overwritten by tags – is the same (click on the image to see full-size).
Some are recognisably urban. Some are pretty bizarre. Some are just pretty. Some make no sense whatsoever.
There’s also some Parisianesque details – these streetlamps have a certain Belle Epoque feel to them:
I also like the mix of new and old. I’ve only walked through it quickly, but the Old Port dates from the 1700s and has a lot of massive limestone edifices with Greek-temple style architectural features, plinths, columns, and so on:
Everything later than about the 1950s looks very modern, practical and largely uninspired. I don’t really have a picture that captures it precisely, but there’s something about the houses built in the 19th century that makes them pretty much all look like something out of the Munsters or the Adams Family – all neo-gothic bricks and tiles, pointy roofs and oh honey, let’s have another turret:
I’ll keep looking to bring you the ultimate in Adams Family real estate…
Amazing pics and excellent write up. Cool looking city.
everything always looks good in the sun, eh. It’s raining now.