Explore Toronto

The Royal Ontario Museum is a museum of world cultures and natural history on Queen's Park in Toronto, founded in 1912 and opened in 1914. Its galleries show dinosaurs, minerals and meteorites beside art and objects from Canada, Asia, Africa and Europe. Daniel Libeskind's angular Michael Lee-Chin Crystal was added to the historic building in 2007.

The Ontario Legislative Building in Queen's Park, Toronto, is the seat of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Designed by Richard A. Waite in the Romanesque Revival style and opened in 1893, it is built of pink sandstone; after security screening, visitors can join guided tours or sit in the public galleries of the chamber.

The Bata Shoe Museum is a museum of footwear on Bloor Street West in Toronto, opened in 1995 in a building designed by Raymond Moriyama. It grew out of the collection Sonja Bata began in the 1940s and holds more than 13,000 shoes and related objects spanning 4,500 years, shown in a permanent exhibition and changing exhibitions.

The Art Gallery of Ontario is an art museum on Dundas Street West in downtown Toronto, founded in 1900 as the Art Museum of Toronto. Frank Gehry redesigned and enlarged the building between 2004 and 2008, adding its long glass and timber façade. The collection of more than 120,000 works covers Canadian, Indigenous, European and African art from the first century to today.

Casa Loma is a Gothic Revival mansion in midtown Toronto, built from 1911 to 1914 for the financier Sir Henry Pellatt to designs by E. J. Lennox. It is now a historic house museum: visitors tour the furnished rooms, climb two towers, walk the tunnel to the stables and see the gardens on the hill above the city.

Kensington Market is a neighbourhood west of downtown Toronto whose narrow streets are lined with Victorian houses turned into grocers, vintage shops, cafés and food stalls. Settled by Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century and later by Portuguese, Caribbean and Asian communities, it was designated a National Historic Site in 2006.

St. Lawrence Market is Toronto's public market on Front Street East, held on this site since 1803. The South Market building, which incorporates the city hall of 1845, houses butchers, fishmongers, bakers, cheese counters and produce stalls on two levels, and a farmers' market fills the North Market on Saturdays.

The Hockey Hall of Fame is a museum of ice hockey in downtown Toronto, founded in 1943 and housed since 1993 in Brookfield Place and a 19th-century Bank of Montreal building. Its exhibits cover players, teams, NHL records and international hockey, and the Stanley Cup is shown in the Great Hall under a stained-glass dome.

The CN Tower is a 553-metre communications and observation tower in downtown Toronto, completed in 1976 by the Canadian National railway. Lifts run to observation levels with a glass floor and to the SkyPod at 447 metres, and the 360 Restaurant turns slowly around the tower at about 350 metres.

The Distillery District is a pedestrian quarter east of downtown Toronto, built around the former Gooderham and Worts distillery founded in 1832. Its more than 40 Victorian industrial buildings of red brick, a National Historic Site since 1988, now hold shops, galleries, cafés, restaurants and theatres along cobbled lanes.

Ripley's Aquarium of Canada is a public aquarium on Bremner Boulevard in downtown Toronto, just south-east of the CN Tower, opened in October 2013. About 5.7 million litres of water hold more than 20,000 animals in ten galleries, among them Canadian Waters, Rainbow Reef, Dangerous Lagoon and Planet Jellies.

The Toronto Islands are a chain of 15 small islands in Lake Ontario, a short ferry ride from the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal in downtown Toronto. They hold Toronto Island Park with beaches, gardens and a boardwalk, the Centreville amusement park, marinas and a year-round residential community where cars are not used.

The Aga Khan Museum is a museum of Islamic art in the North York district of Toronto, opened in September 2014 by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Its white building by Fumihiko Maki holds about 1,200 objects, among them a copy of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine dated 1052, and stands in a landscaped park beside the Ismaili Centre.